


Whispers

by DaysOfFuturePast



Category: Game of Thrones Book
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-02-10 06:52:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 34,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12906486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaysOfFuturePast/pseuds/DaysOfFuturePast
Summary: Five years Lyanna stayed married to Robert Baratheon, bound in matrimony to all of his faults. Five years is not a long time in the winding flow of history. Yet five years changed everything.





	1. Broken Princess

**Author's Note:**

> This is my Faceless Man story. it is not a continuation of GRRM's story. That is his to finish. This is an AU Faceless Man story.

Whispers

Broken Princess

 

The broken Princess staggered down the narrow street.  Each step wracked her with pain.  Her bruised and cracked ribs hurt her deeply with each breath.  Each breathe a labor of hurt and agony.  The fourteen year old girl stumbled and fell against the building she was passing.  With lilac eyes she surveyed her surroundings.  She still had a ways to travel to arrive at her destination and meet her destiny.  The girl whimpered straightening her shoulders. Face contorted with pain she gritted her teeth.  The arduous journey to her final destination was resumed.

Her right foot stepped down on the tiled walkway she was moving down and she cried out in pain.  The ankle swollen and turning blue up past her ankle.  The Targaryen didn’t know if she would be able to remove the slipper boot she wore her foot was so swollen.  Viserys had been most forceful in showing his displeasure to his sister since the “debacle” as he now called it.

“I don’t have much further to go” the slight teenager whispered to herself.  With a grimace the proud girl squared her shoulders and limped down the walkway between the buildings.  The recent past again played out behind the Princess’s eyelids.  Her mind replaying again and again what had befallen her.

She had been so fearful then elated and back to fearful that her soul felt like she had whiplash.  Destiny was indeed a cruel thing Daenerys Targaryen determined.  Viserys had been so sure he was about to acquire the army he had for so long quested for.  He only had to sell off his younger sister like a slab of beef to legitimize Viserys dreams of returning to the Iron Throne.

Random thoughts flitted in her mind reliving the days leading up to her pending marriage to the great Khal Drogo.  She had pleaded with her brother to not marry her off.  She was not ready to be married.  She did not love this tall man with bronze skin.  She did not even know him.  Not a word of his course Dothraki language did she speak.  Her pleas had fallen on deaf ears and angry eyes.  Seeing Viserys fingers start to twitch she had quieted her mouth as she had learned to do.

Daenerys had learned to see the dragon rising in her older brother.  His actions truly frightened her now.  He had changed.  Once Viserys had been happy and gentle though that Viserys had died a quick death.  In a fast downward spiral her older brother soured on life.  He always dreamed of returning to the Iron Throne but it did not consume him then as it did now.  Now it seemed as if every waking moment he tormented himself with desires to return to Westeros and take what was his.  His fractured thoughts followed him into his dream landscape.  He would wake crying out in anger and often in fear which he masked with even greater anger.  Daenerys Targaryen had learned to avoid him at those times.

Daenerys had gone to their benefactor.  With a heart beating fast with trepidation the young Princess had confronted Illyrio Mopatis.  The large man had looked down at her with soft eyes but his words had been harsh and hard even if they were softly spoken.  He talked down to her of duty and honor.  She was her brother’s sister and had to follow his will.  It was her duty to give her body to Khal Drogo to give her brother the army he needed to take Westeros back.  To become King, Daenerys needed to give her virtue to the Khal.  She needed to be stop being selfish and accept her destiny.

The Khal was a fearsome warrior who led a mighty Khalasar.  He was mighty and powerful.  She would be a Khaleesi.  Illyrio told her she would have status and prestige that all Dothraki women dreamt of.  She needed to stop being so selfish and start to think of her brother. 

Illyrio said all this kindly but his words had chilled her.

“But I don’t love him!  Why should I have to marry him? I am not Dothraki.  I have no desire to become this Khaleesi!”

The tall large man’s face had wrinkled at that.  Chuckles of mirth filled the room.

“What does love have to do with anything my little girl?  Love is something the minstrels sing of.  It does not exist.  Be happy you are to marry a powerful man.  Most women live their life that have no meaning.  Their lives never noticed by the world.  Their names not even whispers in the annals of history.  Your name will at least be mentioned in the histories as the Khalessi of a great and powerful Khal. 

“Forget this silly thing called love Daenerys.  It is a rose that hides the thorns that will cut you deeply.  The pain long remembered after the sweet scent has faded and the rose has wilted to dark shrunken petals.”

“What of Serra?”

A shock went through the large fat man.  The large man’s body went absolutely still.  His face did not show any anger at the name Daenerys had heard the staff mention as his long lost love.  Like a statue the power broker merely stood there.  His head lifted and his eyes were seeing far beyond the walls of the room they were in.

Daenerys knew that the man’s eyes were seeing not the present but the past.  The eyes focused again and Illyrio was back in the present.

“As I was saying young girl, love is a chimera that leads one to their doom.  Forget it Daenerys.  You will be married in two days to the Khal.  He will carry you off back with him to the Dothraki Sea.  You will give your virtue to the man and give him many strong sons.  In time he will give your brother his army and Viserys will take back what is his.  You will be a Khalessi.  Accept our fate and stop being selfish.”

That was so easy for him to say Daenerys thought bitterly as advanced towards her goal.  With labored steps the young princess moved forward.  She had moved slowly from neighborhood to neighborhood.  Subtle changes in building construction and décor adorning the walls and terraces signaled the change from one neighborhood to the next.  Her face was covered in bruises.  Glances would come her way and as quickly look away. No one came to her aid.  No one would even acknowledge what they had seen.

How could they be so cruel?  Her heart was so tired.  She had traveled slowly up from the cheap hotel she and Viserys had lodge in just up from Ragman’s Harbor.  No Purple Harbor for them.  Viserys had wrinkled his nose and turned his spiteful gaze at his younger sister when they had arrived this morning.  The anger burning in his breast had only grown since the Khal had ridden back off into the grass steppes.

Daenerys stopped to rest for a long moment her left hand resting against the edge of a rough textured building.  The yellow stucco crinkly and flaking slightly beneath her hand.  Her foot was throbbing.  Her ribs had been badly bruised and maybe cracked the young girl feared.  Each breath was a labor.  Each expansion and contraction of her ribs made her wince and wheeze.  She moaned in pain.  Viserys had been mean and cruel for years now but he was demon possessed since Drogo had abandoned them.

For a minute the pale princess rested before she once more began her arduous journey.  She simply had to reach it.  She was so tired.  The sun was setting now.  The titan sounding his mighty blast to send off the retreating sun on his journey to the underworld.  The heat of the sun had warmed the Princess but now all she felt were shadows on her arms.  The air warm but the lack of sun chilled the teenager.  Her fourteen year old body battered and bruised.

The day of her wedding had come.  She was dressed in a beautiful gossamer gown that should have made her feel beautiful and the center of a magical world of dancing balls and parties where the patrons danced gaily deep into the night.  The little Princess had always dreamed she would marry a man she loved.  She for years assumed she would marry her brother.  Her early childhood fantasies had faded into mutilated torn pieces of nightmare.  As the days passed Viserys became something monstrous and loathsome.  The once laughing and smiling teenage boy had become a snarling, sneering caricature of his former self.  Her dreams of a dashing brother husband had long ceased to exist.

In her dreams at night it was always a handsome strong prince that came to her.  A man who would woo and seek her hand like they did in the songs the minstrels sang of.  A romance of endless balls and songs penned by the smitten prince that he would sing up to his princess on the balcony on the moonlight night.  Those were the romantic dreams of Daenerys Targaryen.

Her reality had most definitely not been that.  No romance.  Only a business transaction.  She had dreamed of wooing.  Instead she was only bartered with no input from her.  No one asked her what she wanted or needed.

The few times she had tried to bring this up to her brother she balked.  She had seen the anger flaring in his slender frame.  He would rage at her and tell her to “shut the fuck up” and “do your duty sister”.  He had waited long enough to seek his kingdom he told her.  Was he not the dragon reborn?  Was he not the king foretold by the red comet that had appeared in the sky five years ago?  He had waited long enough.

Daenerys knew her brother feared his time was running out.  The current heirs were growing to adulthood.  He needed to strike _now_ to take back what was rightfully his.

He could not mar his sister’s beauty so close to her wedding day.  He had punched her in the stomach hard several times and slapped her back hard with the flat of his hand.  Her skin reddened but it would fade before her being carried away by her new husband.  The breath whooshed out of Daenerys lungs making her feel like she was suffocating to death.  Terror paramount in her mind.

Then the time had arrived.  She was terrified.  She had run out of tears days ago.  Her appeals had fallen on mute ears.  Her mouth was dry and she had no words to say.  Her fate was sealed.  The Targaryen Princess had been beaten down by abuse.  Her fate was sealed.  Her destiny blighted.  She would meet it as best she could.  She would meet it with her head held high and not as a simpering teenage girl.  Into royalty Daenerys had been born and would accept her fate.

She tamped down her individual desires and hopes.  Her brother was most probably right.  She needed to be happy to help her brother to reacquire his throne.  She too wanted to see this happen.  She wanted the dragons to once more be ascendant in Westeros.  The Eagle, Direwolf and half-breed usurpers needed to be put down and skinned.  Their foul stench removed from the Iron Throne.  Only then would Westeros be ruled by the true lineage of kings.

She had resigned herself to her fate.  It was her only option.

The broken teen walked on further her destination getting closer and closer with each painful step.  Her body was covered in bruises.  Viserys had totally lost his control and his mind this early afternoon.  He had raged that it was all her fault.  _Was it_?  How could it be she thought to herself with suppressed injustice.  Did she not have any power?  _How could it be her fault_?  She was a petal in the wind caste about by the men in her life.  She resented her situation but had no power to change it.  Like a sheep or maybe a prized heifer she was looked at, prodded and judge by the men in her life.  Her fate was not in her hands.

Viserys had come into her cheap room drunk and raging it was all her fault after their arrival in Braavos at noon.  He did this so often now one abuse seemed to blur into the next session of accusation and accosting.  He screamed why she could not be more beautiful so the Khal would have accepted her.  The accusation was made that she had deliberately turned the Khal against her.  Her actions had driven him away.  Daenerys had started to speak.  She told her brother she was only an innocent fourteen year old girl and was helpless in this play Viserys and Illyrio had put her in.

Viserys had only become more enraged.  Again he struck Daenerys.  His slaps painful striking her face and neck.  Then he had balled his fists and punched her.  Repeatedly screaming like a mimicking parrot that it was “her fault”.  She had collapsed on the floor.  He began to kick her with his booted feet.  The helpless girl had curled into the fetal position instinctively to protect herself.  Thus, the bruises and contusions that covered her arms and legs like sentinels that had not protected their Queen.  Thus, her damaged ribs.

Daenerys remembered vividly the pain and humiliation.  She had wondered if her brother meant to kill her in his impotent rage.  Several times she glanced up when he stopped to rage down at her how it was her fault and she was preventing him from achieving his true destiny.  She saw only a monster raging above her.

Her thoughts came back to the present.  Her strength was flagging.  She fell against a building wheezing in breath.  The awful pain in her ribs constricted her breathing.  A sadness washed over the frail Princess.  How could people be so callous?  They continued to walk by pretending to not see her distress.  Her need for succor.  Were there no heroes or angels left in this world?  Did no one care for the injustice in her world?  The wood was course against her back as she leaned against it seeking strength.  She had to reach her destination.

A spasm of pain wracked her body folding her over.  A determination filled Daenerys.  She would reach her destination.  She pushed herself off the wall and took halting steps down the concourse and its flagstones loosely fitted together.  Weary steps seeming to find every crevice between the stones causing her to cry out when her sprained ankle caught a crease and made her stumble the pain shooting up her leg and wracking her pelvis with agony.

Then she saw it.  The beginning of the end of her journey.  Her strength, what little there was of it, surged and she was able to walk with a little more surety of her step.  She simply had to reach her destination and goal.  There she could take the next step in her sad life.  The bridge like a beacon of hope called to the young woman.  The pain for the moment so much less as hope for her destination kept her feet shuffling forward despite the pain.

Daenerys reflected on how strange life could be.  In the matter of hours, despair, then wild elation and hope and back to terror had filled her life in Pentos on the day of her wedding.  Like a leaf trembling in a spring gale Daenerys Targaryen had been led out like a prized filly before the mighty Khal Drogo.  He was a tall bronzed skinned man with a long mustache.  He had long hair full of bells.  Across his face was a scar that ran from his right cheek down to his jaw.  Daenerys saw that his left ear had been partially cleaved off.  The man’s dark eyes were hard as onyx and as dark.

On his left arm were several deep cuts that were only partially healed and still red and angry looking.  This Khal had been in recent hard fights the Targaryen saw.  He walked around her with a slight limp that she saw he tried mightily to suppress.  Her eyes were large seeing this.  She tried to hide her discomfiture but she was not totally successful.

Illyrio whispered down to her as he stood beside her to present her to the savage Khal.  “He recently fought a savage fight for his Khalasar.  His foe was mighty and fell before Drogo but not before he inflicted the fresh wounds you see and some you do not.  He is strong as an ox though.  His body and will is rapidly recovering.  He lost his blood riders in the fight and had to choose new ones.  He fells vulnerable.”

“Lower your eyes girl!” Illyrio hissed at her when she looked over the Khal looking for the other wounds mentioned.  She could not help herself.  Curiosity had always been strong in the teenage girl.  She obeyed Illyrio lowering her eyes hoping she had not offended the tall man.

Trembling Daenerys waited with batted breath as she was inspected like a mare to be breed.  The man traced her arms and looked at her hips.  He stood back and spoke in his rough guttural language.  Illyrio spoke back to the man.  The Khal did not seem convinced.

Viserys was off to the side not hiding well his fretting.  All could tell that the Khal was less than impressed with the offering before him.

Khal Drogo went to look at what her dowry offered him.  The gifts presented to the Khal for their wedding.

“What did he say?” Daenerys whispered up to the magistrate.

“You are indeed beautiful but you are slender of hips and frail looking to him.  He fears you will not be able to give him strong heirs to rule after him.  He has not been able to produce any children.  He does not feel you are cable of giving him what he needs.  Let us pray our gifts are sufficient.”

All three watched the tall Khal inspect the two medium sized chests.  One filled with precious gems and the second filled with small urns of the most precious and expensive of spices worth a fortune on the open market.  Lastly, on a table beside the two chests were three exquisitely sculpted statues of stallions.  One was pawing the sky, the second looking askance with its mighty head turned and the third standing regal with straight back head and ears up in defiance.

The Khal circled the offerings thrice.  He snorted.  Shocked the three watched him walk back to his horse and then he and his new Blood Riders were gone.

Shock had reigned over the Targaryens and Illyrio.  No preamble or anything.  The Khal was simply gone.

Viserys was in shock because his kingdom was riding away on the back of Khal Drogo’s horse.  Illyrio was shocked for whatever reason he was helping them.  Daenerys was shocked because her prayers had been answered.  She was free!  How wrong she had been.

Viserys had erupted as soon as they were back in Illyrio’s expansive manse.  He raged that Daenerys had humiliated him.  That she had not performed her duty.  He slapped the young woman again and again and screamed at her humiliating her and working to break down any remaining will and backbone.  Illyrio had held Viserys in check but no more.

They were told they could no longer stay with Illyrio or even in Pentos.  They were worthless and a danger to their benefactor now that Daenerys had been rejected.  They were given passage on an old cog to Braavos and enough coin to pay for it and maybe find cheap lodging for several months if frugal.

To say the trip form Pentos had been stormy despite the smooth seas would have been an understatement if not an outright lie.

The passage had been straight through to Braavos without any other stopping off in other ports.  Each of the eight days more and more violent as the emotional waves crashed over the frail Princess of the Targaryen line.  Each night Varys spent what little money they had on rum and whiskey.  His rage only building.  He would come in and abuse his now to him worthless sister.  Each night he was more violent.  More willing to cross the line of simple human decency. 

By the time Daenerys reached Braavos she felt like her body had been stoned repeatedly.  Then this day their first there Viserys had taken what money they had and rented the cheapest of hotel rooms.  There he had stormed and assaulted his sister in earnest.  Her body battered and abused he had lifted her screaming from the floor and thrown her on the bed. 

There Viserys did the unconscionable and took from her what a woman can give but once.  The last of her dreams ripped from her body by violence and rape.

So now she stepped up onto the bridge that she had finally reached.  Her destination could not be so far away now.  Her foot was hurting herself fierce now that her earlier adrenaline surge had left her body she staggered down the bridge.  She had reached the Isle of the Gods.  The religious center of the City that worshiped all gods.

Exhausted at being so near her destination Daenerys sagged down to her knees and looked around.  Her breath was coming in wheezing breaths.  Her body ached and her ankle was pulsing agony to her brain with each step.  The pain in her pelvis and stomach from her violent rape.  She looked around and peered at the closest edifice.  It was a central area open to the sky and surrounded by dark grey obelisks that were placed in a circle with four feet between each slab of stone.  Enough space for worshipers to slip through to the alter in the center of the temple.  She read the bastardized Valyrian written on the top of each slab.  The Moon Stones of the Druids.  She had never heard of that faith. 

Tired to her core of her soul Daenerys shook her head.  She needed to move on.  She gritted her teeth and wearily got back on her feet.  Steps first unsure like a drunk the young woman gritted her teeth again hissing through the pain and proceeded on.  Here the ground was open for a short way. The grass green and redolent stretching out like an evening tide.  She moved on.  She had heard her destination was on the edge of the Isle of the Gods.

She came to a temple.  On the door lintel the script read it was the temple for the Lord of Harmony.  Daenerys remembered reading that this god was worshipped by the peaceful people of Naath.  The structure was a wooden hall made of glowing cherry oak in the falling light.  The doors were open.  Inside she saw that the Lord of Harmony was represented as a laughing giant, naked and bearded and attended by swarms of women with butterfly wings.

The women were most lovely to behold.  She moved on.  The battered pale teenager moved on past other temples she ignored.  She needed to reach her goal before her physical strength fled and her mortal will quailed. 

She crossed a large stone bridge that rose thirty feet into the air its arch spanning a major canal.  The ledges of the bridge gilded with gold and inlaid with silver and copper to make images she could not see or understand in the failing light.  She came down onto a small island that contained the Sept Beyond the Sea.  Daenerys had no desire to enter the temple of her gods.  They had abandoned her and left her all alone in the world. 

She spied another smaller bridge.  This one made of wood that was roughly hewn and had no artifice done to the structure to enhance it.  It was plain and utilitarian.  Her halting steps took her up and over the small unadorned bridge.  It fit with her destination now standing before her.  The House of Black and White stood upon a slightly elevated rocky knoll made of dark grey stone.  The structure was dark and morose with no windows and had a black tile roof.

Like a hobbled horse the Targaryen Princess limbed to come before the large wooden doors that stood twelve feet high and were carved. The left door was weirwood, the right ebony.  In the center of the doors was carved a moon face of ebony on weirwood, weirwood on ebony. It had grey stone steps that lead down to the dock that itself was simple in construction.  Many traveled by boat to come here and find their end.

She went to the doors and knocked.  The sound deadened and seemed to suck the life from her.  What life was left in her weary beaten down soul.  Before her the doors opened soundlessly on unseen hinges.  She did not hesitate.  She had come here for the express reason to end her miserable life.

She entered into the gloom.  The doors closed silently behind her.  Daenerys saw no attendants.  On a neck tired of supporting her head she looked around.  There were torches in recesses providing light that as her eyes adjusted she began to see around her.  She seemed to be alone.  That was good.  She wanted to die alone in peace and unremarked.  Daenerys continued to look around her.  The world she had entered slowly gave up its secrets as her eyes dilated to let in more of the faint light.

With her increased eye sight she saw that across the pool that was centered in the floor was an attendant or servant of the House of Black and White.  They wore a robe of black and white colors dividing the robe.  The figure moved out of sight ignoring her as they performed what religious duties she did not know.  She looked around at the alcoves that held idols of the many death gods that the various people believed in.  Daenerys knew that there were no formal services in this temple of death.

The Princess saw that some visiting worshippers had lit candles to their god, then drink from the fountain using a black cup. The Targaryen knew the religious order refilled the fountain with a poison, so that drinking from the fountain led to a painless death.  That death sometimes called “The Gift” of the Many Faced God.

The room was dominated by the large but shallow seeming pool.  She saw a body lying near it.  The body did not move.  Two figures in their robes appeared and took the body away showing the body great reverence.  The pool was the last stop for those looking to end their own pain, or the pain of a loved one who they brought along for the occasion.  This pool would end Daenerys Targaryen’s suffering.

She stepped down the one step that took one down to the pool.  There was a black cup on the edge.  With a groan of pain she kneeled before the pool.  Tears she had suppressed now rained down her battered cheeks.  Her sobs echoed in the chamber.  She reached out and gripped the black cup.

“Why have I been abandoned by all love and beauty?  What have I done to deserve this fate?  I am an innocent cast about on a windswept sea of cruelty and maleficence” she whispered in a tired broken voice.  She went to put the cup in the black waters.

“You are not alone.  I am here” was whispered back from the dark shadows.

Daenerys started at the voice near her ear dropping the cup into the pool.  The chalice sinking immediately out of sight unremarked.  Her aches forgotten for a moment the teenager whirled around and gasped.  There beside her was a priest of the Faceless Men.  Her quiet face regarding Daenerys flatly. 

Her heart only now settling down from the gallop it had just run.  Daenerys looked up at the priest who had pulled her hood back and down.  She was not tall only an inch or two taller than her barely five foot height.  She was slender like herself but seemed to lack the curves she herself had been blessed with.  She had long brown hair pulled back and then running down to frame her long face.  Her grey eyes piercing as they stared down at her calmly.

“You scared me!” Daenerys gasped clutching her heart.

“Please forgive.  I have to ask though.  Why is someone so young and innocent seeking the embrace of our god?  You have your whole life before you.”  The woman regarded Daenerys now with clear curiosity. 

“Hah!" Daenerys laughed bitterly.  “My life is a nightmare” she said and then she started to weep.  Her body racked with sobs.  Now that she had started to weep she could not stop.

She felt herself enfolded by strong arms that pulled her to a strong warm body. 

“I am here” whispered softly in her ear.  Daenerys wept.  Daenerys was held gently as she let her soul weep for her plight.  The woman whispered to her in soothing tones.  “Tell me” the priest intoned gently.

Slowly with halting stops and starts Daenerys told this priest what had led her to be here and ready to take her life.  She was rocked gently as she told her long sad tale.  The priest offered no words of comfort or enlightenment only the warm secure embrace.  Finally, she had told the nameless priest all.

The priest slowly pulled her upright. 

“You are the daughter of King Aerys II then?” she was asked by the priest.  For some reason the voice seemed to have a hint of inflection with the question and not the neutral tone of earlier.

“Yes.”  How had she known her father’s name?  She had not told the Priest of her father’s name.

“I am from the land of your birth in my life before I became no one.  I can tell you that you have a destiny to fulfill Daenerys Targaryen.  What it is I do not know but it is not to end here?  Not now.  Not this night.  Go forth back through these doors of death and out into life and strive with it.  I foresee a change of fortune coming though I cannot tell you what, when or how.  Only that it will come.”

Daenerys looked deep into the passionless face before her.  “I did not know your order also had prophets?”

“There is much you do not know about us.  The world knows only some.  We are much more than the scribes write.”

For some reason Daenerys believed the young woman whom she had just met.  A woman she knew nothing of.  “What is your name?”

“No one.”

Daenerys did not press the matter.  She knew she would never discover her name or see her again.  Something had changed in Daenerys heart though.  She would endure.  She would begin to fight against the maelstrom that was her life.  She chose life no matter how heinous.

Maybe just maybe the Faceless Man with no name was right.  She left without a backward glance.

The Priest followed the young woman out the doors of the temple with her eyes.  Her gaze steady.

From behind her she heard the soft voice of her master “Why did you interfere?  You know we are supposed to allow each person to find their own destiny.  To turn aside or not according to the edicts of their own heart.  You changed her mind and her destiny with your words and actions.”

“I know master.  I could not help it.  She was so young and beautiful.  Life is unfair and cruel but one such as her was not supposed to die alone and unremarked tonight."

“Who are you now?”

“I am no one now.”

“No.  You are still Arya Stark deep down.  We have not fully removed it from you.  I too recognize the name of her father and its connection to you and your family."

The Kindly Man sighed.  He looked around his temple.  “I had thought perhaps you had truly grown past being Arya Stark.  Alas.  Daenerys Targaryen was supposed to die tonight.  She lives.  I know your heart ‘No One’.  You plan to kill her brother Viserys by the end of the next day.”

His best Priest did not argue.

“This you cannot do.  History has been altered from what it should have been.  You are now responsible for that future Arya Stark who is also No One.  Now the Dragon Lords must arise again.”

The Kindly Man saw No One staring at him with a questioning look.

“With her life, magic will return to the world.  It is your responsibility to make sure she takes the path of light and not darkness.  Else in the end you will still have to kill her.”

“Don’t you mean to kill Viserys?  He will be king.”

“You must guide the path of the Dragon Lord to light.  You know we only meant to reduce and control Valyria at the Doom.  Not annihilate the Freehold.  The children were innocent as were the slaves in the pits trapped in the mines toiling to their deaths.  There were many slaves in the Valyrian’s households whose lives were not forfeit.  They did not wish for death.  Not all the Valyrians were cruel despots.  We were too successful with our plans.  Because of this we will now forbear.”

“Because you have allowed the Dragon Lord to live it is up to you to guide her to the light.  Help her and aid her.”

“How am I to do that?  I cannot foretell the future.” 

The Kindly Man smiled.  “Arya Stark.  You are truly capable.”  He sighed.  “I can’t seem to keep my successors from leaving me.  Each in their turn and still I must toil on as the leader of the Oder of Black and White.  I fear I am to become immortal.  First the Wharf King left me. After him soon left the First Sword.  Then Jaqen H’ghar left me in his way and now you, the Direwolf, will have to leave me.”  Another long sigh escaped the Kindly Man’s lips.

“I do not wish to leave here.  How am I to right a grievous wrong I do not understand?  I am no master of prophecy or maker of Kings or Queens.”

“You have a new destiny to fulfill my brightest and best student of this generation.  Go and start to fulfill the destiny you have created this night.  You have much to do and little time to start doing it.”

Arya stared at the Kindly Man.

“I fear you have no choice in the matter No One.  You made your choice when you whispered to Daenerys the words of life and destiny.”

Arya stared at her teacher and mentor.  She bowed her head.  “I accept.  I will honor the task you have bequeathed to me.”

“If you need assistance come back to me Arya.  You must succeed.  You have put the world on a dangerous path.  You must correct it.”

The priest bowed low and walked to the passage way to the warrens below to gather the tools and supplies she would need to start performing her new mission.  The Kindly Man watched her go with a thoughtful look on his face.

A shadow separated itself from a deep shadowed alcove.

“This is a dangerous game you play master” Jaqen H’ghar whispered coming to stand before his former master.  “It was you who ordered Arya Stark to circulate by the Pool tonight.  You somehow knew the last Dragon Lord would come to us tonight seeking her own death.  You knew Arya would stop her.”

“I disagree Jaqen.  It was time for Arya to again perform the Ritual of Supplication.  It had been too long since she walked among the supplicants” the Kindly Man told the nominal leader of the Faceless Men.

Jaqen snorted.  “Sophistry my mentor.”

“I know not what you speak of Jaqen.  Our protégée is free to do as she chose.  I had no more control over her actions than death itself.  I deny everything.”

“I repeat this is a dangerous game you play my old friend” Jaqen answered.  “The variables are too many.  By your actions and our code of ethics you have bound our hands.  The fate of the world now lies in that young woman’s hands.”

Jaqen stared hard at the man who reported to him.  The High Priest of the Order of Black and White.  The Kindly Man may have ceded control to him years ago but it was the Kindly Man that led the spiritual side of the House.  Up to till this night Jaqen H’ghar had trusted this man implicitly. 

“I do not know why you did what you did mentor.  This goes against all our precepts.”

“You sacrificed much Jaqen when you refused to assume your priestly duties of our order.  By only accepting the martial aspects of our House you lost the right to know the Unknowables.”

Jaqen stared at the Kindly Man.  He took a deep breath.  A pensive look on his face.  Then the look turned dour.

“You are always going to throw that in my face aren’t you _Mentor_ ” he emphasized the last word.

“Yes, yes I am” was the serene reply.

Jaqen sighed.

“My greatest protégé, the Wharf King, foresaw this nearly three decades ago when he took Eddard Stark as his student.  He foresaw that his scion would be the one to guide the returned Dragon Lord to the light and to their destiny.”

“Prophecy” Jaqen H’ghar snorted.  His face showed his doubt.

“Yes, prophecy my loyal student.  I trust in the Blind Visions of the Wharf King.” 

Again Jaqen snorted.  “A Blind Vision leads us.  Wonderful.  I hope you know what you are doing my Master.”

“So do I.  So do I” whispered the Kindly Man.


	2. False Dragon

Whispers

False Dragon

 

Viserys sat at the bar in the dive he had turned into.  The name vaguely twittered on the edge of consciousness.  What was the name he thought bleary.  Yes, that was it “The Tired Albatross Tavern”.  His head weaved as he drunkenly looked around.  The bar had little going for it except cheap booze that he was helping to relieve them of.  His head lowered to the bar top of hard oak.  His mind wondered again to how he had come to this pass.

He was born to be King of Westeros or the Heir Apparent at the least.  His father had been killed by a Craven Lion posing as his guard.  His brother had been killed by treachery on the Trident.  No one could have defeated his mighty brother if not by chicanery.  Robert was a drunken fool.  All knew that.  He was a lout and his wife had grown tired of the fool and lout.  She had abandon him for his brother.  That had triggered the war that led the would be king to his dive.  He cursed the deposed drunken wannabe king.  His brother had achieved that much before his death.  The Valyrian drank another slug of cheap whiskey.  Viserys never stopped to consider that currently he himself was a lout. 

Viserys turned it over in his mind again as he had many times in the past.  Lyanna had left Robert Baratheon and gone with Rhaegar.  He himself trapped in a marriage he had not wanted. Why hadn’t he married them both? Viserys reasoned.  In his drunken stupor he failed to reason out that Lyanna was already married to another.  When you were a high royal you simply did not walk away from a marriage.  War had resulted.

The fucking Stag had given chase to the Dragon to take his Direwolf back.  A Direwolf who had come to despise the drunken man who could not keep his cock in his trousers.  The man had bastards all over Westeros Viserys had heard.  He wondered how Lyanna never got pregnant with his children.  That mystery was for another day.  He ordered another drink.  He shuddered reaching into his pocket and only finding a few stags and copper coins.  He would soon run out of money.

The battle on the Trident had ruined everything.  It led to him to be dispossessed of his true rights.  He had much to avenge.  _He was the next in line damnit not that illegitimate half breed_!  He felt his inner dragon cursing.

Viserys lifted his shot glass up and saluted to the lost patrons celebrating the dregs of life with him here in this run down dump.  His violet eyes bleary.

He did not notice the figure sitting in the corner who eyed him intently.  The figure had followed him into the bar several hours ago.  The unnoticed patron took a seat in the corner of the bar.  That end having no windows and dimly lit.  A robe covered their features and hide their hands in shadows.  The person nursed several rounds of ale while running their ghostly finger around the rim of the stout mug.  The mug engraved with ships at full sail.  The person was like a wraith in their dark robe residing in the stygian shadows.    

The barmaid had tried to flirt with the person but was rebuffed.  She had left in a huff.

Viserys tried to remember his childhood.  Once those memories could bring him at least flitting moments of happiness.  Those visions of living in the manse with Ser Willem Darry had been pleasant.  He still had some of his family’s heirlooms then.  Persons of power and prestige had sought them.  Then Willem had died and things went bad in a hurry.  The visits from those with power slowly waned till they were no more.  He and his sister were no longer welcome in their homes either.

He had had to sell his heirlooms one by one.  Each sale had ripped a little more of his heart out of chest.  Each sale had embittered him with one more cut to his soul.  Each cut bleeding his soul a little more. 

It had all been so unfair his fate.  Constantly kicked out of one place or another and knowing they were hunted by an Eagle and the Direwolf.  By the seven he hated them with every fiber of his body.

He threw back several more slugs of cheap whiskey.  The burn in his throat and warmth in his stomach for a few moments tamped down the anguish in his soul.  He was almost out of money.  He felt a desperation in his soul.  What was he to do?!  He was a king and he lived like a penniless pauper.  Again, Viserys felt the Dragon rising in him.  Damn his sister for acting like a slut and turning Khal Drago aside by her slutty actions.  It was all her fault.  He had been so close to acquiring the forces he needed to take back Westeros.

His dreams were in shambles.  The fates all conspired against him.

The Dothraki were crass and base dogs he knew.  They would serve their purpose of acquiring Viserys his throne.  Then he and his knights would show them the true power of the Dragon.  Knights would trample those miscreants into dust.  They were but a means to an end to Viserys.  He would use them and then cast them aside.  It was his birth born right.  He was King in all but name after all.

With a weary and somewhat off balance pivot in his seat Viserys got off the bar stool.  He had to reach and grip the edge of the bar till his balance returned.  He would go back to the hotel he shared with his tramp of a sister.  It was time to again show her again the fire of the dragon.  The would be man would teach his sister his displeasure for ruining everything. 

In an unsteady gait and with a few bumps into patrons and tables Viserys made it outside.  It was the midafternoon.  The sky was hazy with high scudding clouds. Despite the diffuse light, the sunlight hurt his eyes as he squinted up and down the lane.

It took him a long moment to remember exactly where the hotel was.  Slowly from the fog of his whiskey soaked brain Viserys recalled the way home.  He took off down the lane tilting like a ship whose ballast had shifted in a storm.

He did not notice the silent robed patron move out of the Tavern behind him.  The figure tracked him walking ten yards behind the would be King.  The silent stalker gaze was focused and intense on the back of Viserys.  Down the main lane for this section of Braavos that was a traditional area for weaving and thus called Weavers Warren.  Viserys walked unsteadily down cobbled streets with his unknown shadow following behind pacing his steps.

He turned into a side ally and went down it to hit the next lane that would take him to the hotel that he and his damn sister were residing in.  He felt the dragon beginning to rage in him.  It needed release.  His sister would pay most dearly for her betrayal of him.

For the last three days he had been so fuzzy when he left the tavern that he had become lost getting home.  Yesterday he had passed out and did not leave the tavern till after sun set.  He had been so disoriented and got lost several times.  His stomach had roiled and he threw up.  Memory was vague but Viserys was sure he had crawled the last few hundred yards to the hotel.

Barely conscious he had stumbled to bed and almost immediately fell asleep.  So tired and disoriented he failed to give his sister the beating she deserved.  He vaguely tried to bring up the rage to rape his sister again but his mind was to diffuse and scattered to even make the attempt.

Not so today.  He was drunk but his faculties were still intact.  The denied king of Westeros needed to punish the stupid sister who had cost him his realm.  _This day Daenerys would suffer like he had suffered_!  His soul still roiled with the humiliation of Khal Drago riding away without a backward glance at him.  HIM!  The true king of Westeros.  He would have his revenge on the uncouth savage hulk.  He would enjoy parting the man with his imbecile skull.

He started to walk down the side alley fuming at the injustices that had plagued his life.  He felt his pulse quickening at the thought of abusing his sister and punishing her like she deserved.  Daenerys had cost him so much!  His loins ached to again defile his sister.

The nearly twenty-two old Targaryen did not notice the shadow that still paced him enter the side passage.  The shadow within the shadows walked twenty steps behind the Valyrian.  The stalker paused a moment glancing back.  A youth was in the entranceway.  The two nodded at each other with the youth stepping back.  The stalker turned and looked at the other end of the alleyway.  She caught the eye of a woman at that end.  They too exchanged nods with the young girl stepping back.

Unbeknownst to Viserys the alleyway was being warded and any potential foot traffic would be shunted aside.  Today his drink had not been spiked.  The administrating of the drug easy to accomplish.  That had been the reason his mind had been so muddled and clouded.  Now was the time for learning lessons.  He would learn his lessons well.

The stalker pulled their hood back.  A woman in her mid-twenties with strawberry blond hair and green eyes looked intently at the Targaryen.  Anger poured out the very pores of the woman.  Her face was lined with worry lines at the corners of her eyes and around her mouth.  Her forehead had the creases of toil and effort on it.  Her skin was deeply tanned.  She moved forward in a flash.

Viserys cried out in shock and pain when his left upper arm was gripped harshly in a painful grip.  The young man’s body was ripped around in a whirl the alleyway flashing before his eyes.  A loud groan was heard with the air whooshing out his lungs with a savage right hook to his stomach.  Then a chop to his ribs made him squall in pain.   A heel punch landed on his forehead stunning him.  Another vicious punch to the stomach had him folding and falling to his knees.  A savage chop to the back of the neck made his stomach heave.

He vomited with gut wrenching spasms.  On all fours he wretched out all the alcohol he had consumed.  He was lifted up and a heel kick hit him in the chest again knocking the air out of his body.  He fell to the ground flopping around like a fish out of water.  A body desperate for breath filled Viserys with panic.  Cries of pain and abuse filled the aisle while the small redhead circled his body kicking him in his ribs, hips and limbs as they thrashed trying to protect the body being kicked mercilessly.

The Valyrian was cruelly pulled up to his knees by his long silver hair.  He cried out in pain and wept tears.  Then harsh slaps landed on his cheeks again and again.  This was followed by short vicious jabs that landed on his left cheek, forehead and chin.  His lip was split and his left eye punched hard several times his eye swelling up.

Then his head was thrown back.  The next moment Viserys howled with the vicious kick to his crotch.  He howled like a wild animal in a snare.  A second kick nearly made him pass out.  He toppled over to the ground gasping.

Finally, the assault stopped.  In his fear and agony Viserys did not register that his assault mirrored the assault he perpetrated on his sister when he raped her.

Viserys weakly lifted his head groaning at the pain that filled his body.

“Wha—What did I do to you?  Why have you attacked me?” Viserys rasped out a throat raw from upchucking alcohol and bile.  Viserys head sagged back down.  A loud cry of anguish spilled from his mouth when the woman gripped his long white hair again and pulled him back up to his knees.  She roughly got him upright and jerked his body to get him centered.  He started to sway over but she gripped his shoulder and slapped his face so hard his head whipped to the side.

“Sit up damnit!  My next blow will make that look like a love tap” the woman snarled at Viserys.  “You disgust me.  You call yourself a dragon … where is our fire now little man?” the woman sneered at Viserys.

With an effort Viserys kept his body upright his eyes flaring as he worked to keep his world from spinning in a gyre.

“Who are you?” he croaked weakly.

“My name is not important.  I am a member of the Savaged Sisters.  I was like your sister once.  Abused and broken.  Many are.  Most survive.  All broken.  Some of us have bonded together to hunt down scum like you.  Unfortunately, your sister needs you still.  Therefore, I will let you live.”

Viserys processed this information.  Who was the heretical harridan?  How dare her touch him.

His defiant thoughts betrayed him.  The thoughts racing in his mind mirrored on his face.  He did not see his assailant lift her hands up in turn to slap his face.  His head exploded first right and then left from the resounding slaps to his face.  The pain seared into his very soul like vitriol.  His hangover was a thing of the past.  Terror had burned the alcohol from his blood.

“You are watched scum.  I have sisters and brothers to watch you.

“Brothers?” Viserys asked.  Like a loud war drum his head pounded.

“Do you think only young girls are abused.  Many boys suffer as we suffer.  They are our soulmates.  They call themselves the Battered Brothers.  We watch and strike when we find pigs like you.”

The woman stood before Viserys with her green eyes spitting pure venom down at him. She kicked him in guts hard making him wretch again but nothing came up.  He looked up at his tormentor with wide fearful eyes.  _Was she going to kill him_?

He was pulled roughly to his feet.  He discovered that his assailant was much stronger than him.  How could such a small woman be so strong he wondered?  She glared at him with her green eyes.  She reached up to grip his blouse top and twisted her fists in it.  She pulled his head down effortlessly.  They were nose to nose now.  The hate this woman felt for Viserys was palatable to him.  He fought to keep from whimpering as he felt his severely bruised testicles contract.

She leaned her head up to his ear.  There she whispered “We will be watching you little man … little man who beats women … we will castrate you if you do it again …” The little man’s gulp was most satisfying.  The woman released Viserys throwing him back to fall on his ass.

She rose up.  Like a sentinel from the beginning of time she stood there gazing down upon the frightened small man.  Her body unmoving.

Viserys grabbed the tattered fragments of his male ego and stumbled to his feet.  The neutered dragon lord stood their unsure what to do.  He was so scared his knees were shaking.  His bladder threatening to lose control.

“What are you waiting for?”

“Can I go?”

“Yes.”

Viserys gasped and turned in a rush and limped down the alleyway.

“Little man!” Viserys gasped stopping immediately not wanting to anger the woman.  He squealed feeling something hit him in the center of his back.  The something hit the paved stones.  Viserys could have sworn it sounded like coins.

“I know you have drank your money away.  This affects your sister.  Take this money and put it on the rent for the next few months.  Buy staples.  You can take two silver canal coins when necessary and continue your drinking each day if you must _little man_.  Do not short change your sister little ‘dragon’ (the word sneered).  We are watching.”  There was a long pause.  He bent down to pick up the coin bag.

“Remember this though little dragon.”  Viserys froze his motion.  “We have surrounded you with spies. If you belay my orders … if you hurt your sister … well, in the morning you awake with no balls.”

The last supposed dragon lord could not stop his gasp and squeal of fright.  His face showed his terror.

“Oh please.  Pick up the coin bag and leave small bleatling.  I grow tired of you.”

With a whimper the fallen man grabbed the bag and righted himself and fled.  He no longer cared for his dignity.

The alleyway was soon empty.  The woman looked at the fleeing man.

From either way the two persons who had guarded the alleyway came down to the center where their friend awaited them.

“You did well Roscoe.  Mansy.”  The strawberry blond flipped them each a gold stag.  The two teenagers caught them with a happy gleam in their eyes.

“Savaged Sisters … Battered Brothers?” Roscoe asked.

“I want our little ‘dragon’ to think he has become ensnared by a large web beyond his understanding or control.  It will help to control him” the Faceless Man answered.

“Damn your good” the young man whistled with a smile on his face.

“Roscoe be ready at the fourth quarter of the day near their hotel.  Have Sylvina ready.  We need to finish the second act of this little operetta.  Give my regards to the Wharf King Roscoe.  I will be visiting him shortly.”

The slender dark haired lad looked at the redhead with a sly look.  His curly locks shook with his affirmative node.

“What are doing No One?  This is much effort.  This is not a contract is it?”

“Most astute Barnacle.”

The teenage boy grimaced at his nickname with the Faceless Man.

“Geezzzzzz … you know I hate that nickname” the youth whined while Mansy snickered.  She came over and ruffled his hair and kissed him on the cheek.  Roscoe blushed mightily.  Mansy winked at the Faceless Man.  Only a ghost of a smile crossed the Faceless Man’s features.  They left the strawberry blond woman in the middle of the alley laughing and looking at their gold coins.

The Faceless Man walked out of the alleyway a minute later and turned down the opposite direction of the Wharf King’s accomplishes.  She had much to do.  She walked down the stones looking at the two and three story buildings noting the construction.  The roughhewn logs that had been pegged and doweled into place.  The cracks mortored with caulk that was well maintained.  The small narrow entrance halls with their doors that had narrow glass panes running down in narrow vertical panes divided into eights to represent the phases of the tides.

She walked on.  In her pocket she rubbed the two coins that she had since she was seven years old.  The two coins that her father had given her.  Her good luck coins.  The coins that had led to her freedom.

She walked on down the lane for several hundred yards before she turned to the left and went down a narrow access hallway between two three story buildings.  Only two feet separated the buildings.  There was barely enough space for her walk without her shoulders scraping the bricks of the buildings.  The air dank with the poor drainage here.  Mold in the air.  The thin sliver of sky never let the sun bear down this small slice of the city except for a few minutes in the high summer.

The alleyway dead end where another row of buildings ran perpendicular to this row of buildings.  She was two thirds of the way down when she went in a narrow doorway.  There was a stairway there with one torch alight at each floor. She went up the stairs that switched back till she reached the third floor.  There she went down the dark dank walkway that was lit by distant spaced torches with two having guttered out.  She passed doors that had numbers on them.  She reached six and took out her key.  She stopped and listened.  She saw that two hair strands she had stuck between the door and its jambs were undisturbed.  She put her key in the lock and turned the key. 

The room had no windows and was pitch black when she closed the door behind her.  She took twelve steps to the table. She put her hand on the table edge and went in four hand widths and grabbed the box of matches.  She struck a match and by the light lit the lamp on the table.  She turned the wick up and the light flooded the small room. 

Arya took two long lighting sticks and put them in the flame of her lamp.  She walked around her small apartment and lit the lamp beside her small bed.  The other lamp was a large one hanging on a hook.  When they were all light the room was fairly bright.  Arya looked around at the small dresser and mirror on the top.  She went to it and looked over her face.  She examined it carefully for any tears or sloughing.  Arya spotted a blemish on the left cheek. 

This face was a favorite she had used several times before.  Others had used it before her.  The air was cool but it did not bother her.  She took off her robe and stood nude inspecting her robe.  It was her ‘work’ robe she liked to use.  It kept her warm enough and was easy to clean and maintain.  She went to the dresser.

Unlike many of her brethren she did not like to keep a ‘face’ on her true face any longer than necessary.  Others wanted to hide away their true selves despite the danger.  By living life through other faces they sought to forget horrid pasts.  Arya had fled before her destined fate befell her.  She had seen it coming.  She had raged and fought against it but she was only a girl.  Her father had protected her but her mother had other ideas. 

Her father had done all he could do for her she knew now.  Convention was a powerful thing.  In Westeros a high princess only had one purpose.  To be traded off for influence and become a heifer crapping out babies.  Male preferably.  She would never have accepted that.  Her father said she had the wolf in her.  Just like his sister had.  He would sometimes ruffle her hair and then hug her tight.  He would murmur that she reminded him of his precious sister.

When the time came he sent Arya away.  It was difficult for both but they knew only this path gave her a chance to live a life of meaning.  The Wharf King had told her father that she had a destiny to fulfill.  That Arya would help restore balance to a darkened world.  That Arya would help usher in a better era.  She knew her father had never really believed the prophecies.  What happened in Essos held little interest to her father.  Arya did not believe in prophecies either.  She only knew that the Wharf King believed in them.  Whether or not the Kindly Man did she was not sure.  He shielded his thoughts well.  He acted like he did.  Jaqen H’ghar believed in them a little Arya deemed.

She sat down on the bench.  On the dresser top she had her implements and potions that all Faceless men used in their craft.  She pulled the satchel that was on the edge the dresser over to her.  With slow sure motions she pulled the leather thongs through the loops pulling her satchel open.  She reached in carefully and pulled the precious sheets out.

The Faceless Man looked at the thin sheets of paraffin wax that were pressed into the four faces she had brought both on their fronts and backs.  She had brought five sets but she was wearing the fifth one currently.  The two top wax sheets had no face between them.  The paraffin sheets were kept in the Crypt of Faces to absorb the water that was constantly steaming up through vents in the floor. 

The moist air keeping the faces fresh and impregnating the skin with the magical elixirs mixed in large tubs in the open area beneath the chambers.  Priests mixing in the herbs, rare elements, chemicals and their own blood in just the right amounts and time with their magical chants to create a magical brew that allowed the faces to bind to their masters.  It was the Faceless Men’s blood that sealed the bond.

Arya had spent many a day or night in that cavern working the vats that were heated underneath to slowly steam the water to let the vapors waft up to the chambers above.  All apprentices taking on this duty as they assumed their first tiers of Accomplishment.  The paraffin sheets were also in the Crypts of Faces to absorb the magical vapors to allow Faceless Men to take the faces into the field without the faces decaying and warping.

Arya examined the blemish again.  She would need to mend it when she took the face off.  A face was strained when it was taken off.  The more powerful the Faceless Man the more the face bound to the wearer.  Arya had become very powerful.  The face wanting to become one with the wearer.  The face whispering to the wearer to bond with me.  Accept me.  Forget yourself. 

That was essential training of all true Faceless Men.  The songs and spells to resist the siren call.

She reached down to the carry bag she had worn over her shoulder.  She flipped up the cover and reached into the bag.  It had many sub compartments sewed to the inside of the bag.  She reached into the bag and put her fingers in the left most sewed compartment.  She pulled out the large container that had filled the large slip and placed it on the dresser top. 

She opened it and looked at the various stoppered vials in their restraining loops and several other smaller containers.  She opened one of the small containers.  In it were carved scallops each in a felt bed.  The vials were of different basic colors that corresponded to various eye colors.  The colors could be carefully blended to give a precise hue if one was needed.

There was one clear vial.  Arya took it and removed the slender stopper and tilted her head back.  She dropped a drop into each eye.  Arya hissed.  She was one of the ten percent that felt pain at the liquid’s contact with her eyes.  With her index fingertip she touched her left eye and removed the contact lens.  She put it into a scallop and then did her other eye. 

The Faceless Man blinked her eyes letting them breathe.  She pulled the stopper out of another vial and put a drop onto the contact lens.  The glass went clear.  She used another stopper to cleanse and make the contacts ready for their next use.  She closed up all the vials.  She put everything back into their slips and closed the container and put it back in her large carry bag.

Next she pulled out a scalpel. The long slender razor sharp blade had runes scripted up and down the shaft and down the blade to just before the keen edge of the blade itself.  Arya placed it on the dresser top and wove her hands over the blade chanting the ancient magical language of the first Faceless Men.  The men and women from across the realm of Valyrian rule melded their magic and lore to make a new and more powerful magic.  A magic with its own language, runes and rituals.  A magic based on the life force of blood and by balance its opposite of death.

The magic had been and was powerful.  The magic had been too powerful four hundred years ago.  What had supposed to cripple Valyria to make it amenable to changes had instead turned into complete disaster and utter destruction.  Most of the Valyrians and almost all of the nascent Faceless Men were killed. 

They had tapped into the same power the Valyrians sought ever deeper in the Earth’s heart.  It was theorized that with both the Valyrians and first Faceless Men tapping the magical elixir that some kind of feedback loop occurred.  It was all conjecture.

Arya finished the initiation runes and picked up the scalpel.  She brought the blade up to her hairline.  This was crucial.  The cut had to be at the precise marge of her hairline.  When the Faceless Men worked to cut the face off a supplicant the cut used to remove their face had to be most precise.  The cut at the original hairline of the person who wore the face in life.  That precision allowed the wearer to both wear the face and hair the person last had in life. 

The Faceless Men said “The skin always remembers.”

“Amhrán téad sreabhadh aibhneacha sagus” Arya began the chant of cutting.  She ran the impossibly sharp edge of the scalpel along her hair line and then around her ear.  A thin weal of blood appeared and a few trickles ran down her face.  The pain of the cut long learned how to be suppressed.  Then Arya cut down and underneath her jaw and forward to her chin.  “Onoar chun na farraige, go dtí an fharraige” Arya continued to chant as she went up her jaw line on the other side of her face.  She continued with her knife to cut around her right ear to her temple meeting the initial cut “Chun arm na farraige oscailte” Arya finished the rune ritual chant of the Cut.

She reached up with her hands murmuring more arcane chants and ran her fingertips along the cut and did a fan motion with her fingertips.  She then pressed her spread fingertips equal distance from each other into the continuous cut and pulled back. Slowly the face pealed back from her bone structure.  It protested murmuring for Arya to forget herself and keep her ‘true face’.  Arya easily ignored the siren call.  The pain was only minimal.  The memories of the original owner flooded into her mind.  All the young woman’s memories at once flooded into her consciousness yet again.

The face now adhering to Arya’s fingertips.  The face limp and folded down limply.  Arya’s hair changing color and shortening several inches.  It hung limp against her neck and upper back.  She would need to wash it and put conditioners in it to restore it to its luster and fullness.

Arya had come to feel she knew this woman in her past life.  The memories like the facets of a kaleidoscope.  Each jewel a distinct memory of the dead woman.  Arya focused on the bright shiny rubies of the woman’s early life and not the dark emeralds of her last days.

This ability to absorb the memories was a rare gift.  This was something she did not share with her Masters.  One of several things.  She still had Needle buried and not forgotten.  She was a warg.  She walked among her brothers and sisters when they did not know it.  Yes, she had her secrets.  She was able to pull all memories of the owners from each face she wore.  What had taken the Kindly Man and Jaqen H’ghar decades to achieve she had achieved by her fourth face.  She was their equal if not superior.  She kept this secret close. 

She had started to wonder about her order.  Had they lost their Way?  Was the Way the correct path? She had begun to feel that a new direction should be taken.  So had the Wharf King.  He had been forced out.  But still at times they worked together.  She wondered on that dichotomy as she often did.  Cross purposes.  Conflict and balance.

A new wrinkle had come to her mind.  Daenerys Targaryen.

She shook her head.  She put the face down on one of the paraffin wax sheet with features facing up.  She kept her fingers on the face. She felt the elixirs wafting out of the wax and impregnating the face.  The chemicals and magical essence renewing the skin and ligatures.  Still, use taxed the face.

Arya looked at the blemish that had enlarged with the face’s removal.  She felt the blood of three other faceless men in the face form previous repairs.  Only she could feel this.  She was indeed becoming powerful.  She knew their names and more enlightening if not frightening was she could pull their strongest memories too.  This ability growing within her. 

Four days ago she left the temple of Black and White to begin her assigned quest.  When she touched the High Priest of the Faceless Men, the Kindly Man, as she had left for this current mission, she had felt his confidence in his path and that he thought that something great was coming.  She also knew he had been less than truthful with her but she felt no ill will to her. 

We all had our secrets.  She could not stop her small grin.  Faceless Men were not constructs by the Alchemist Guild.  They merely learned to control their emotions to a large degree.

Arya reached back into her shoulder bag and reached to the front of it and pulled the pin needle from its loop slip.  She pulled it out looking at the runes that circled the handle in a weave of runes going down to where it suddenly narrowed down to a long needle with a hair thin tip.  She placed it on the table.  She touched the face of Adrielle Hallaw.  Arya had become attached to this face of a woman who was trampled by a wagon and brought to the Temple of Black and White over one hundred and twenty years ago.

The woman had been a lover of women.  When Arya had first worn her face all her memories came to Arya.  This woman had been a kindred spirt.  Unfortunately, she had been hemmed in by society and she had thrown herself underneath the wheels of the wagon in despair. 

Arya in her way honored her kindred spirit from three generations ago.

The face had hung for generations before it was used.  The Rooms of Faces full of racks that held the faces collected for centuries now.  Many faces as virgin as the day they were first placed in the Room of Faces to become yet another ornament in the sacred rooms.  Most faces were never worn.  The faces were used yes, but, also honored and preserved.  The collection grew day by day.  Soon a new chamber was to be opened as the collection of faces ever grew.

The ventilation ducts near completed.  The room would be christened and yet another room of faces would be born.

She picked up the implement and pricked her finger.  A sharp grimace crossed her face.  The magic in the implement fierce as it took her blood and enhanced Arya’s magical might.  This repair of the face required much more than the mere recitation of glyphs in a written order.

Arya had to sing song the tune that focused one’s thoughts on the use of will and skill that were necessary to repair the damaged skin, muscle, nerves and ligatures.  She let several drops of blood fall onto the rip in the face.  She circled her index finger letting more drop onto the rest of the face.  She reached with her free hand into her bag and pulled out a vail.  Then the stopper was removed with deft motions of her fingers.  The bottle was lifted and turned over.  Several drops were guided to drop onto her pricked finger.  The wound was instantly healed.  The pain ceased.  Also, the subtle wicking away of Arya’s strength ceased.

Now Arya worked her blood droplets into the blemish that had grown to a small tear.  She massaged the blood into the now torn face and chanted the necessary healing of the face.  Her blood would renew the whole face as well.  Strengthening the magic impregnated in the faces very pours.

“Mé anseo ag a chur ar mo fola ar an duine scanraithe onóir do na mná a thug dúinn an duine a thabhairt ... dó ar ais go dtí an fhoirm bhunaidh ... dhéanamh láidir agus sogarth arís.”

The face started to heal.  Arya continued singing her healing rhythms and tunes.  Soon the face was healed.  Arya put the other paraffin wax sheet on the feature side of the face and pressed the magical paper onto the face.  The healing elixirs maintaining the face for future use.  All the faces put back in the satchel.

Arya washed her body with the small basin filled with water.  Next she washed her hair and rinsed it.  She was shivering in the cold room but suppressed her thoughts on coldness.  She focused on her internal rhythms and felt blood rush to her skin warming her.  She put conditioner in her hair and rinsed that out.  She then worked into her hair lotion from Sothroyos to strengthen and revive her hair further.

Then she filled another basin and washed her ‘outside’ robe.  When washed out she put it on the back of the other chair at the table.  She put on a clean robe.  She was not tired per se but she went to the bed with only a sheet and thin cover.  She climbed onto the bed and quickly went to sleep.

She would rest for several hours.  She had one more part to craft to finish this day.  The second overture to the opening act.  Then she could begin her research and forming of her nascent plans.

///////////

Daenerys was taking her evening walk.  She had needed to get out of her oppressive room.  She also needed to get away from Viserys.  The sight of him sickened her now.  He was still her brother and she was dependent upon him.  She knew she had no skills to earn income but one.  That was something she would avoid at all possible costs.  To sell her body to merely survive would shrivel her soul.

She had been thankful that her brother had come in late the previous three days.  So drunk he could not talk coherently or walk straight.  His thoughts clearly addled.  She had been thankful.  He had been so drunk he could not even think to punish her for her supposed deficiencies.

When Viserys walked into their rooms this late afternoon Daenerys had at first thought he was in his drunken state that left him stupefied.  It was not so.  His gait was labored and unsure and she smelled the alcohol on his breath but he was coherent.  A thrill of terror ran through the slight Princess.  Was he going to abuse her?!  She asked him how he was faring.

He had glared at her but did not speak at first.  Then he snarled out that he had paid for the next two month’s rent.  He was going to rest.  His head was killing him.  With that he left the common room and went to the door to his room.  Sister watched brother work to get his key in the door.  She noticed her brother’s breathing was labored and he limped on both sides.  His face battered.  She pretended to not notice.  He entered his domicile without a backwards glance.  Had a horse hit him? Daenerys wondered.

A wicked grin came over her face at the sweet thought.

She did not care in reality she realized. She only knew she was safe for another night.  With Viserys drinking in the day and sleeping it off at night she had a form of sanctuary.

She needed to feel the sun on her skin.  Leaving the hotel behind her, Daenerys and walked down the streets of this section of Braavos she had come to know with her slow walks down its streets.  She walked down the street she was on and took the first bridge she came too.  There was still an hour of strong sunlight left before the sun would start to near the horizon. 

At the top of the arch she looked out over the canal and gondoliers working their mall craft in their colorful uniforms.  She smiled seeing people moving to and fore on the boats.  Where were they going?  Were they happy?  What did their futures portend?

She watched the boats for ten minutes before she moved down the bridge to the other side of the canal.  It was a large square with a central fountain of a sphinx surrounded by winged nymphs.  What it meant she had no idea. She moved around looking at the people milling around and vendors with their carts selling various food and drink fare.  Her stomach rumbled.

The fallen Princess started.  Fifty feet in front of her a small girl was cutting the strings to the money purse of some young male merchant going by his fancy high priced clothing.  He did not notice his theft.  The small girl began to sprint away with her ill-gotten prize.  No one seemed to have seen it.  She started to speak up but started.  The small girl in her haste looked back to see if the young man had seen her and ran straight into Daenerys Targaryen.  The girl rebounded not expecting the impact.

Daenerys grabbled with the girl and somehow got her hands on the strings of the purloined stolen purse.  She ripped the purse from the girl.  The girl could not be more than seven or eighth and was slight.  The girl struggled frantically with panic in her eyes.  Daenerys easily controlled her.  The Targaryen made sure she had the purse and then released the girl.  The girl pulled away and seemed about to attack her but her head suddenly turned.  The waif’s eyes went large and she ran off.

Their fight had captured the attention of the young man.  He must have noticed the theft and surmised what had occurred.  He came up to Daenerys who handed him the pouch with no question asked.

“Why did you release the urchin?  She should be put in jail!” the young man barked at Daenerys.

“Precisely” Daenerys replied quietly.  “She is probably hungry and needs shelter.  She should not steal though.  It is yours sir.  Have a good day.”  Daenerys turned to leave.  She had had enough of the world.  It had ignored her in her hours of need.  She took several steps in her departure.

“Miss.  Please stop.”

With a sigh Daenerys turned around.  What did he want?  Her eyes went large.

The young noble merchant had pulled out five silver stags and two large gold coins from the pouch.  “Take it.  Honesty is a rare commodity in Braavos.  You have earned this token of my appreciation.”

“I only did what I must.  I did not perform a task worthy of pay.  I am touched by your generosity though good Sir.”

“Oh but you did.  Please take it.  I see the bruises on your face and wrists though you have sought to cover them.  I see your limp.  Please take this and know that Braavos is better than what you seem to have fared.  The city is full of miscreants I fear.”

“This was done by my brother.”

The young man first looked stunned and then extremely angry.  The man from his hip whipped out a rapier.  “The cad!  Take me to him and I will gut him for you beautiful lady!”

The thought was tempting to Daenerys but Viserys was her brother and the rightful heir of Westeros.  She forbore.

“I think not.”

“Then at least take the money.  Please!  It will soothe my soul.  I will keep an eye out for you my fair maiden.  Let me help you in this small way.  I beg you of it.”

Daenerys was touched.  To have kindness shown to her touched her soul.  She took the money.  She thanked the man and left.  Her spirits lifted.  There was good still in the world it would appear.

//////////

Arya walked up upon Rosco and Sylvina Stanner from behind their eyes following the beautiful Valyrian as she walked away back over the bridge.  Her form diminishing and then she was gone.  She reached out and gripped their shoulders and whispered to them “Got you”.  She suppressed a snort of humor seeing them both jump up in feeling her grip and hearing her words.  They whirled around.  The street urchins were not used to being taken unawares.

Seeing who had nearly made them piss themselves they berated the friend of the Wharf King.  Any friend of his had to be good.  Arya was a Faceless Man to be sure but she had a heart of gold though she tried to hide it.

“You two performed you parts to perfection.  She now has money to survive and more importantly the will to carry on.  She will want to stay close to this area to maybe again receive help from her benefactor.”  Arya winked at Rosco who blushed mightily.  “Good job” she told the two Wharf Rats.

She gave them both two gold stags.  The girl bit the coins with a twinkle in her eyes. “Real deal” she chirped.  They both walked off happy with their pay.  Arya watched them walk off.  One should always treat the people you work with, with respect.  Her father had taught her that.  She knew they were loyal to her beyond all fault.  Her graciousness engendered it.

Arya pondered the day’s events as she watched them disappear down the lane.  She had set the foundation.  The structure now stabilized.  Now it was time to get to work.


	3. Let It Begin

**Whispers**

**Let It Begin**

 

Like glittering stars the candles burned in their stands around the lone figure in the room studying parchments and books written by authors both dead and alive.  Off to their right was several maps of the lower eastern coast of Essos on the narrow sea with one that was a survey map of the Flatlands between Andalos and Myr.  The pages turned slowly by fingers that had ink smudges on the tips as each page was reverently turned.  In this time reading was a rarity.  This person cherished the gift her early upbringing had gifted her with.  The gift had allowed her to advance quickly in her chosen path of life.  Many who came to the House of Black and White were illiterate. 

Her noble birth had taught Arya Stark her letters at a young age.  The gift patiently taught and eagerly received.  It had opened up worlds far beyond the tall, dark walls of Winterfell.  The gift continued to open doors and new worlds to her now.  Many of her other Faceless Men had to rely on oral histories to gather information but the speakers were not always available. 

Many who walked through the doors of the Temple of Black and White did not join the assassin’s guild.  Most those of who could read or learnt the letters gravitated to the Intelligence side of the order.  The Assassins were actually the sizable minority of the members of their order.  Few were the people who were eager and willing to serve death directly. 

The less martial members of the Faceless Men worked to support the Assassin and Intelligence guilds.  Many became like the persons who became Builders of the Crows Arya had mused remembering her childhood.  These people worked for the temple itself.  They pursued the mundane tasks of support and upkeep to those who performed in the outside world.  It was the Intelligence spooks and the Assassins who walked out in the world.

The best Assassins worked totally alone while the less accomplished worked in teams.  Arya worked alone.  She had from beginning.  She was the lone wolf she had thought from the beginning.  It was her nature.

A large infrastructure built to support the Intelligence and Assassin guilds.  The Intelligence guild in turn supplied needed research on the targets of the Assassins.  Data gleaned on both the target and their environs.  They gathered the data and condensed it so it could be read to the assassins who were illiterate. 

In reality though, Arya knew that most of the Intelligence spooks worked for other rented masters.  Much of the work the House of Black and White did not involve outright contracts of death.  Most of their work gathering information for clients with the Iron Bank being their chief client.  Organizations and powerful persons who needed information to make decisions.  Not all information could be gleaned by spies.

The fact that the Faceless Men were not aligned with any one order gave them freedom to see situations with a clear focus.  Their global work had allowed them develop contacts across two continents.  Over the centuries they had developed continued contacts and establish foundations of support in all the major cities of Essos and Westeros.

It was the intelligence work that brought in the income the order used to fund its daily operations.  The order made the Holy Writs of Assassination so onerous they were, while not rare, not overly common.  The price often not something of value that could support the order.  Thus, their organization had made it known to all their supreme abilities to capture and synthesize information. 

There were many spy apparatuses in Braavos and all the Free City States of Essos.  As good as they were their contacts tended to be limited to their base of power.  The Faceless Men had taken care to craft contacts across the globe.  They had information.  It was information that governments, companies and religious orders needed to make decisions that benefited them.  It was this need the Temple of Black and White filled.  Filled most profitably.  

The Faceless Men’s neutrality gave them the ability to collect, collate and analyze data that was highly sought after.  It was members of the Intelligence guild of the House of Black that were most often in this sanctuary of knowledge.  Arya was the anomaly of an Assassin who frequented this place of words, images and maps.

More than once the Faceless Man had found it funny how the populace of the world and Braavos saw her order.  They saw them only as Ghouls who had no souls.  The men and women of the Temple of Black and White only soulless construct.  The legends helped.  It was the rare person that knowingly challenged a Faceless Man. 

The Iron Bank and the Sealord were happy to perpetuate the false legends since they often used the temple of Black and White for their own needs. 

Even the authors who wrote supposed histories and the writers of bodice rippers bought into the same lies and added to them in their tomes and books.  The authors especially loved to show the Faceless Men as tortured individuals.  Arya especially loved how they supposedly spent a lot of their time torturing each other.

How could they function if they spent all their time trying to destroy each other she often wondered?  Let the myths continue she would smile to herself.  Often while working in this place of learning Arya had such stray thoughts.  Then she would again focus on her current study.

The Hidden Tome was always available to the Faceless Men.  Arya sat back in her high backed whicker laced chair and relaxed.  Her shoulders ached slightly from her being stooped over to read the small elegant calligrapher of the books she was currently reading.  Each letter in and of itself were works of art.  Arya looked on the walls away from central table that had three seats.  Only hers was occupied.  Screens were set up to divide the long table into thirds to give some privacy to allow the reader to concentrate.

Arya saw the small whale oil lamps on the walls.  Little pale suns creating small spheres of hazy diffuse light to reveal the stacks of books on chests themselves filled tight with tomes and sheaths of parchments.  Around her were crates filled with books yet to be returned to their places on the shelves or chests. 

The small woman looked at the square columns that supported the domed and arched ceiling above.  The columns made of cherry wood that glowed a warm inviting red in the shallow lamp light.  The rafters filled with carved angles and demons.  The carvings looking down at the patrons below.  Good and Ill represented.  The tenor of the song brought into the library by the heart of its patrons. 

Small chairs against the wall and several long tables beside them contained other books not yet collected to put back in their racks.  On one desk a few half opened maps.  Arya turned her head to track long tear drops of molten wax travel their lonely paths down the candles following the path of past brothers.  Their migration to the bottom of the scions slow and silent.  The random shapes created at the base of the candles were indecipherable and held their secrets close.

Arya bent her head back down reading the tomes before her.  This was one reason she had risen so fast in the ranks of the priesthood of the Faceless Men.  The simple art of reading.  Most of the acolytes who moved into the ranks of the Assassin Guild of the Faceless men could not read.  Many of these became effective assassins but few progressed up the rungs of leadership.  Their world was too limited.  Many who read still relied almost exclusively on their instincts and ability to gather live actionable intelligence on their assignments.

From Arya’s viewpoint they limited themselves.  Arya was reading a book now on Dothraki culture and had finished reading yesterday a book on Dothraki prophecies and their religious beliefs.  She had over the week read large parts of eleven books that gave her more knowledge on the Dothraki.  She now felt she knew intimately their customs and beliefs.  She had spoken to a No One two days ago, whose given name was Pradiz mo Nein, about a mission he had performed recently among the Khalasar of Khal Qraevarko.  It was the time of the recent festival of the Prancing Mares.  Khal Drogo had brought his own Khalasar to join the festivities. 

He was on the way to Pentos to seek yet a third Khalessi.  Of course Arya now knew that his prospective Khalessi had been Daenerys Targaryen.  He had had time to partake of the celebrations with another Khalasar.

They met on the eastern boundary of the grass seas of Dotraki above the swamps of the River Selhoru.  The narrow isthmus of land between the forest of Qohor and the swamps above Volantis.  They had made a combined camp.  A peace between the two Khalasar.  At least at the beginning Arya thought with an evil chuckle.

Pradiz told Arya all that he had witnessed.  The Faceless Men as a rule enjoyed talking of their missions and all they had seen.

“It was quite the show Direwolf” Pradiz told Arya.  More and more often she was being called the name given to her.  Arya did not mind.  She did not mind No One or her given name though at times she thought it might be premature.  One surrounded the name of their birth to be given the name of No One.  As time passed and one became an Assassin or Operative in the Intelligence guild one was given a name that was right for them.  One never selected one’s name.  It was given by one or many who saw the name that a No One should wear as their name from that time forward.  Soon Arya would simply be the Direwolf.

Arya snorted.  Of course Jaqen Hagar would break that rule.

The assassin listened enraptured to the story that Pradiz had to tell.  The peace had quickly turned to shit Pradiz told Arya with barely repressed glee.  There on the steppes, Qraevarko had challenged Drogo.  Drogo’s inability to sire children with two different Khalessi had been insinuated to mean that Drogo’s seed was weak.  The Khal proclaimed that this showed Drogo’s unworthiness to lead his Khalasar. 

Drogo’s first Khalessi had had several harrowing miscarriages.  Finally, she gave birth to a son but she had died in the producing of Drogo’s heir.  Unfortunately, the heir was stillborn.

The second Khalessi had borne a son but he died the next day.  She became pregnant again.  Again the fates were against the Khal.  This Khalessi had a miscarriage in her second trimester.  The event killing the young girl.  Khal Qraevarko shouted for all to hear that his proved that Drogo’s seed was surely lacking. 

The fight had been most rollicking and provided entertainment for the Dothraki and the Faceless Man in disguise.  The fight had been a near thing.  Drogo reputation both enhanced and vulnerable.  He added more bells to his hair but was severely wounded.

It was the injuries from that fight he brought to Pentos when he found Daenerys Targaryen wanting.  His body and pride had both been wounded.  Arya mused the man had not been in the mood to take another Khalessi at that moment.

Interesting thought Arya.  Using this information and their culture she was discovering in her readings Arya had already formed a plan in her mind.  It was complex but she felt she would succeed.  She had many pieces to make fit but she had confidence in her skills, insights and planning.  It was imperative that Daenerys be wed to Khal Drogo.

This would be the surest way to make the return of Dragon’s possible.  Arya had turned it over in her mind and she was sure this was the right path to make that happen.

To achieve her immediate goals Arya had already sent several ravens to agents aligned with the House of Black and White in Pentos.  They would make arrangement for what Arya would need when she landed there.  She would be leaving shortly for that port.

The Faceless Man had made these arrangement with the Kindly Man.  His contacts vast and arrayed around the known world.  He had asked her of her progress in providing aid to Daenerys Targaryen.  Arya told him of all her thoughts and initial plans.  He had been most impressed with how she had stabilized the fragile Princess’s situation while still putting place the first pieces of the puzzle to getting her on the throne of Westeros. 

It was not said but Arya knew that was the goal of the Faceless Man.  One way or the other Viserys would need to be removed from the picture.   How this was supposed to get Daenerys Targaryen on the Iron Throne Arya had no idea.  There were no suitors other than Khal Drogo.  Arya seriously doubted Khal Drogo had any true intent of ever honoring any contract with the wannabe Dragon.  Arya kept these thoughts to herself.

Daenerys while pleasing to the eye did not have the mettle of command.  She was an ornament.  Nothing more.  She would be able to use her body to help her achieve her ambitions and goals though.  Men were easy that way after all.

Still, Arya wondered about the seemingly provincial girl.  There was something about her.  Did she have a hidden core of untapped strength?  Arya’s senses said no and yet something tickled the back of her consciousness.  Arya smiled.  A pretty face could cloud even her judgment Arya judged sardonically.  Fortunately, Arya had her training to protect her the Faceless Man joked to herself.   

Despite her less than glowing opinion of Daenerys Targaryen, Arya could not help but picture the girl in her mind’s eye.  She was quite the bauble. While appealing she was a small thing Arya thought.  Like herself she thought sourly.  The Direwolf preferred her women tall and stout.  Arya liked meat on the bone she thought smugly.  Such women had the strength and endurance to meet her ravenous needs and tastes.

“I am most pleased with your nascent plans Direwolf.”

Arya felt pleased.  He had never called her by her given name before.  She felt her chest swell with pride.

“You truly are the best of this generation.”

“Thank you master.”

She closed her book and rolled up the map she had been inspecting of the lower eastern coast of Essos.  She would be traveling there shortly.  Arya knew she needed to act quickly.  The need to pause the movement of the Cyvasse pieces already in the field was paramount.  She would make the board static till she could take the field.  Arya knew how to make that happen.  She walked away from the study table and exited the back room that was reserved for the Faceless Men at the Hidden Tome.

The House of Black and White was not conducive to the housing of a library both physically and culturally.  Much of the air was damp with the pools used to fill the Pool of Lament that people drank from to end their lives on the first floor of their temple.  Other pools used to keep the Chamber of Sacred Faces above them at the proper humidity and the mix of elixirs at the right ratios added damaging humidity to the air in the upper levels of their temple. 

The Temple while deeply hewn into the rocky isle upon which it stood was still not roomy to say the least.  There were meeting and training rooms and halls on the first and second floors below the entrance hall.  These floors were the communal areas that Faceless Men, Priests (which Arya was one) and acolytes convened.  Then below those levels were three floors for Faceless Men to live in.  There were small meeting rooms and several communal areas where they met to relax and discuss recent or upcoming missions. 

Most Faceless Men left their temple to meet their more primal needs and seek rest and relaxation.  When on a mission a Faceless Man was always focused totally on their mission.  This was one of their greatest strengths.  The ability to focus with a singular intensity on the task they had been assigned.  A Faceless Man was not given a mission till their teachers and then handlers thought they had achieved such focus.

Arya had been given her first mission when she was only eleven and in the middle of her third year at the temple.  Many if not almost all other members of her guild needed five to six years of training before they were ready.  As in all things Arya excelled in her duties and endeavors. 

She knew she was being groomed for leadership.  She has already a Dread Priest having risen past the ranks of Ravage and Harrow Priest.  Her passage through the ranks meteoric.  She was like the Red Comet that had appeared arching across the sky leaving a fiery trail behind five years ago.  Arya was the best of her generation.  She knew it.  All knew it.  Only the level of Ghoul Priest lay before her.  The Kindly Man, Jaqen H’ghar, Zhardas na Mizhz (Wind Walker for his ability to move into any secure enclosure unremarked) and Cholala Qoqu whose given name was Death Dealer. 

Arya knew she was ready for the initiation rites and tests.  She would formally become the Direwolf.  A name already given but one she rarely as yet used.  She had not felt ready to be named after the savage name sake of the House of her birth.  She no longer had those thoughts.  She had proven herself again and again.  She was ready but she must first perform this mission.  With its successful conclusion she would have already proven herself worthy of the highest rank in her order.

One day it would be her hand that led the House of Black and White.

The curtain rustling, Arya stepped out of the backroom and into the main room of the Hidden Tome.  It was a large open area with large pillars rising up at regular intervals to support the ceiling three stories up.  The walls all lined with bookshelves.  The large warehouse like open area filled with bookcases in row after row of petrified phalanxes.  Frozen in place with their shelves filled with warriors awaiting their orders.  Each solider breaking free of his stasis when pulled from the shelf and read.  For a small time finding life again before once more put into his phalanx and somnolence until once more pulled from a shelf.  Each turn of the page a breath of life to some forgotten culture, history or person.

The Faceless Man spotted two … no four other patrons as she scanned the room.  The action instinctual for any assassin even when there was no need.  By the formal vest and jacket with rich trousers she saw two high level accountants from the Iron Bank in the historical records of expenses and birth records on the left wall that was floor to ceiling bins of parchments divided by years.

At a center table was an ordinary citizen by attire and demeanor.  Arya walked by.  They were reading a book of Myrish love poems.  Was he in love?

The last was a woman perusing the latest bodice rippers the family made sure to keep stocked with the latest yarns of impossible deeds accomplished and forbidden lusts fulfilled.  Arya would read one if she could find a nice lesbian based story.  Alas.

Arya walked to the front of the establishment and made eye contact with Jaqicho Baerroran the owner of the bookstore that specialized in books from across both Essos and Westeros with a focus on the antiquities and collection of mundane daily minutia of life.  The establishment having been in this location for nearly five centuries.  The store passed from father or mother to their eldest.  A little over three centuries ago the then owner of the establishment had had a contract placed on them that the Faceless Men had accepted.

The Faceless Man that had been given the assignment had reneged on the contract.  He was brought before the traditional Tribunal of Judgment.  This was a special convening of the Overview of Contracts that each contract was reviewed and judged on.  The brother had passed the inquiry.  The contract had been unjust and thus the right to execute waived.  The Guild of Assassins always informed those spared death of the contract.  They had the right to know who had placed it on them and why.  They could decide what to do about it.  The Baerroran’s in their profuse gratitude had offered to setup a library area for use just by members of their order.  The offer had been taken.

Since then the man and his descendants had made sure to collect books, maps, books of letters and correspondence along with historical novels that would shed light on history and culture that populated the world.

Arya availed herself of several books at the end of last week to refresh her memory on the Targaryen wars of succession in Westeros.  The books had proved most useful.  The Maester from King’s Landing had an masterly understanding on dragons and the Valyrian’s use of said beasts.  He had provided insights to the thoughts of the Targaryens.  Arya could not help but shake her head at the senseless infighting between family members.     

Such a waste of life and human capital.  Still, reading these books and other books on Valyrian culture and especially their dragons had given Arya more ideas on how to repair the damage done with Daenerys Targaryen’s first attempted betrothal to Khal Drogo. 

The Faceless man had sent a message via Rasco to the Wharf King seeking information from the ill-fated mission to marry Daenerys off.  The man was a gossip hound.  Sure enough the next day a rolled scroll was delivered back to the Temple of Black and White by Rasco.  Her efforts to contact the mentor of her sword teacher had been well worth the gold crown she paid Rasco for his services.

Arya shook her head reading of the missteps and blunders of the fat man from Pentos had committed.  The man had thought as a rich magistrate and did not do his homework.  Daenerys Targaryen was the scion of the last Dragon Lord.  She needed to be paraded and sold as such.  Arya had in mind the perfect wedding gift.  She merely had to find it.

She would be visiting the Hidden Tome again.  She felt she was on the right trail.

Jaqicho was nervous as he always was around the Faceless Men.  All seemed to forget that the men and women of Black and White Temple were the most nonviolent of people.  Only when performing contracts or taking out human monsters were they dangerous.  _Of course they were deadly_.  How could they be anything else?  She went up to the front counter and tipped the man two silver stags. 

Arya always preferred to pay in the currency of her homeland if possible.  Jaqicho tried to refuse the token of Arya’s appreciation.  She was the only Faceless Man who left a token of thanks to the family of the Hidden Tome.  It was Arya’s right to use the services of the bookstore per the contract signed in blood from three centuries past.  Still, with her kindness and generosity the family nearly tripped over themselves to be at her service.

Indeed, behind the middle age owner was his son Gyllen.  Both men were blushing.  Their shyness always touched Arya.  Gyllen looked at her with longing.  All knew that Faceless Men were exquisite lovers.  Making men and women intoxicated with your skills in the bedroom made for much easier infiltration and spying on ones targets and potential enemies.  Arya as in all things was a master at the arts of lovemaking.

She had fucked many a man in her missions.  She had screamed in raw gut wrenching orgasms as the men howled in ecstasy as he rutted with the most willing woman beneath him.  The men filling the seeming slut with their hot seed.  A Faceless Man to be successful had to be bisexual in their talents and desires when on a mission for their house.  It was these skills that acquired much of their information.  Lips were most loss in post coital lassitude.  Drugs and alcohol helped in the loosening of those lips. 

Such skills had other uses.  Uses when information was not what the Faceless Man sought.  Sex made it so much easier to reach and kill a person who had a contract on them.  By using the target’s carnal desires to get past their guards and their own instinctual self-defenses the contract was more easily fulfilled.  More than a few ‘marks’ had been pleasured by Arya great lovemaking skills.

The men and one woman had never felt the thin blade slipping between their third and fourth rib.  The blade penetrating the heart through the two lower ventricles.  The blade then ruthless twisted over back and forth.  The heart instantly ruined.  The shock of death usually prevented any cries of anguish.  If any did occur her right hand pressed over their mouth occluded any faint screams of the dying.

She looked flatly at Gyllen.  He had the fire of a twenty year old lad.  Unfortunately for the tall handsome sinewy blond male with blue eyes Arya was not interested.  Anyways, he did not truly understand who he wanted to sleep with.  He was in many ways still naive.  It was for the best.

That could not be said for his twin daughters Wenosha and Saeloreah who were, at seventeen, nearly three and half years younger than Arya.  Both were about 5’8” tall which was six inches more than Arya’s height.  Arya sighed at that.  Even her sister she had read was shooting up like a tall sentinel pine back in Arya’s homeland of the North in Westeros. 

Jaqicho knew the score with Arya.  So did the sisters and they did not care of or fear Arya’s deadly talents.  It only added to Arya’s allure to the two tall beautiful voluptuous women.  The owner sent his son to the backroom to straighten up the scrolls and books and to put them back on their proper bookshelves or bookcases.  Arya had no interest in him.

When not performing her tasks Arya only slept with her own sex.  Wenosha and Saeloreah had been putting up books but now came over to coo and flirt with Arya.  The tall voluptuous sisters’ eyes filled with heat for Arya.  The Faceless Man felt her pulse quicken.  The two sisters flanked the assassin and pressed into Arya’s body and stroked the strong arms and shoulders of their _Arya_.  It was only about sex with them since the sisters were lovers but loved to share Arya and other female patrons in their bed.

Their father was understanding.  Gyllen may be pleasing to the eye but the brains and intelligence had gone to his sisters.  Their father wanted the next generation of ownership of Baerroran to be successful in the family business.  It would be his daughters who inherited the business despite family custom.  The father watched his daughters guiding the Faceless Man to the stairs that led to their living quarters upstairs.  His two daughters were already kissing Arya deeply as she groped and felt them up.

Baerroran had long ago made peace with his daughters’ strange proclivities.  His wife had died when the children were all still young.  He thought he had done the best he could.  He loved all his children and would not step in the way of their happiness.  With the man’s desire to have his family business thrive he had decided that he did not truly care that his daughters loved each other and women exclusively.

Over the next several hours Jaqicho heard much raucous noises from upstairs.  Like the tides rolling across Braavos riding the moons kiss the sounds from upstairs rose and fell.  He knew he would be visiting his favorite whore house, Breathless Encounters, tonight.  The headboard banging the walls relentlessly and the sound of the bed legs on the floor was quite arousing.  He let his son off so he could find his Summer Islander lover, Jorra Zhad, and rut the night away.  Jaqicho left many chores undone and closed the shop.  He had needs too he thought happily to himself with hurried steps down the road.

//////////

With a springy step Arya left the Hidden Tome.  The sisters had wanted her to spend the morning and early afternoon with them but she had much still to do.  Wenosha and Saeloreah had made it hard to leave openly showing their heavy jiggling breasts and opening their legs wide to display the charms Arya had sampled over the last hours. 

Almost, Arya had ripped clothes back off and rejoined them and their sweet embraces but used the iron will she had learned from the Temple of Black and White.  The pissed off sisters had then rolled into a hot clenching sixty-nine and ate each out feverishly to show Arya they could fuck very well without her.  The Faceless Man rolled her eyes at the immature display.  Immature but very hot.  She left their bedroom with a smile.

Arya had left them two gold dragons.  They would buy nice dresses and short clothes for Arya to cut and rip off their bodies when she returned. They liked it rough at times and so did Arya.  They all loved it a little rough when the mood struck.  That was often when they were together.  Being a powerful personality it was totally hot to the Faceless Man to cede control to another or others in the case of the sisters. 

She left their sweet domicile going down the back stairwell.  Arya had stabilized Daenerys Targaryen’s situation but it would not last forever.  She had much to do and little time to do it.  Arya grimaced at the trite saying but sometimes it was true.

Her readings over the last week and half had reinforced what she had picked up in the temple of Black and White.  It was not said outright but she could sense it from the Kindly Man and Jaqen Hagar.  The Kindly Man hinted and Jaqen glared but it meant the same thing.  They were countervailing opposing forces but they both pointed in the same direction.

Daenerys Targaryen was the last Dragon Lord of Old Valyria.  Others might arise but not from the old bloodlines.  It was obvious Viserys was not the one that the Red Comet had foretold.  Viserys was unstable having inherited the same madness that had led his father to kill Arya’s grandfather and uncle in a most heinous fashion.  The Faceless Man had to remind herself that it had been her ancestors who provoked Aerys II Targaryen, the father of Daenerys, to his actions.  Arya turned that over in her mind.  Her father had never dwelled on it and had spoken of it but rarely.

To Arya it was ancient history.  She knew it had been a grievous wrong but it did not touch her directly.  Her intense reading had revealed to her that Rhaegar Targaryen had been free of the taint that haunted Viserys.  He had been beautiful in both mind and body.  A beauty that his sister easily eclipsed.  She was too young to catch Arya’s eye but she was already a beautiful teenage girl rapidly maturing into a stunning beautiful young woman.  Her great beauty would help her to rule when the time came. 

Arya had been observing the young Targaryens since she had whipped Viserys into shape and Rasco had performed his charade giving Daenerys hope and stability she had so desperately needed.  The young princess walked down the paves stone streets with such a regal poise.  She exuded royal presence and did not even know it.  Daenerys was quite the figure in her demure and yet still alluring dresses she wore.  She had bought several new ensembles with her small largesse.  The teenager had sharp tastes that befit a Queen in waiting. 

Arya smiled faintly.  The girl was indeed beautiful if she was affecting her however tangentially.  Arya shook her head from the shadows.  Her thoughts cleared.  She observed brother and sister moving up the bridge conversing softly.  The two now pretending to be reconciled it seemed.  Still, there was an invisible divide between them.  Viserys had crossed a divide he could never walk back.  Daenerys had a stiffness to her that Arya’s trained eyes could easily discern.  Daenerys was perpetually on guard with her brother.  That was wise Arya felt.  She hoped to not to have administer another ‘lesson’ to Viserys.  It would complicate her mission.

Her eyes followed them up to the apex of the bridge.  Daenerys turned to look at the canal traffic below.  Viserys pontificated on his greatness.  Arya could only catch snatches of his diatribe but she had heard it all before.  The teenage girl pretended to listen.  They would continue on in this false minuet until Arya could start to truly begin her work.

It was enough the Faceless Man thought from her hidden vantage point.  Arya had worked her facial muscles to change her look from the long look of her Northern Westeros heritage.  It never hurt to be safe she thought.  Her face now more rounded and eyebrows arched.  She had pulled her hair back into a loose ponytail to further change her look.  All Faceless men trained extensively to use their own face as a mask as needed.  The faces from the Chamber of Sacred Faces were only used when the need was more extreme.  Or when a Faceless Man wanted to lose themselves into another face and another persona. 

She saw anger in Viserys but he was definitely keeping it in check.  His eyes and face showing him swallowing bile that he would have dearly loved to heap upon his beautiful innocent sister.  The volatility of her brother definitely kept Daenerys leaning away from Viserys.  The young fool talking of how he would somehow find another way to take back what was his.  He was the Dragon reborn.  Westeros was his by right and birth.

Delusional.

Still, Arya wondered.  Daenerys walked by her brother as he ranted and raved about his destiny and how he would take back what was his.  It was his birthright after all.  For the male Targaryen this was merely bleating of a lost sheep.  Still, Arya contemplated the words she heard as she now trailed behind them like a lost leaf in their wake.  Her training allowed her to blend completely into the milling crowd.

Arya knew there would be those in Westeros who would see Viserys as the true heir to the Iron Throne.  The thought sad but true.  He was weak and his speech proved it.  The heart was a mysterious thing the Faceless Man knew.  The threads of the fates interwoven and always resonating with strange polyphonic melodies. 

Was the supposed heir of his House chopping kindling within in the heart of Daenerys Targaryen?  Kindling that might take flame and become white hot if the right accelerant was given at the right moment.  Could it be the lost boy king was building brick by brick the bedrock that his sister would use as the foundation for the edifice she would rise up to reach the stars?  Mayhap the constant declarations of destiny, birthright and preordained providence were slowly coalescing in this seeming slip of a girl.  The affect unknown even to the princess.

Arya thought it might be so.  She would have to be careful but perhaps she could help this young, shy, docile girl find her own inner dragon.  It would be the Fates who would control the destiny of Daenerys Targaryen the Faceless man thought.  She could only help from the side and tangentially. 

The Faceless Man was satisfied with what she saw.  Viserys had been cowed for now.  She was sure when she set her plans in motion and the pieces on the Crevasse board started to move about Viserys would rediscover his supposed courage.  Arya could not be in all places at once.  She had to play her own pieces carefully.  She had a nascent plan she had formed in her mind.  Daenerys was still a fragile sheltered girl.  She could not move the girl but so fast.  Arya could not let her own skills and competence cloud her perceptions of the beautiful Targaryen.

Arya caught herself.  Why did she keep using that adjective to describe her charge?  The Faceless Man shook her head clearing her thoughts yet again.  She moved on.  She saw Rasco watching from his own shadows.  He would send word if the supposed Dragon slipped his leash.

With a quickening pace Arya moved on from this neighborhood of cheap hotels and lower income homes.  She had supplies to buy and had to make sure her other needs for her journey were being attended to.  A lot of her work would be that of the warrior.  She needed to be prepared.  She moved down towards to the docks of Ragman’s Harbor.  Here you could find establishments for every need.  The purple harbor businesses were for the rich and genteel.  Arya need a meaner type of fair from the places she visited.

For the travels and tasks that Arya would need to perform she would need various supplies.  She would need to visit apothecaries, a certain weapon smithy and visit the establishment of a foreigner from a far off land.  She would need to by victuals and clothing.  The House of Black and White could provide most of what she needed but Arya liked to be as self-sufficient as possible.  Also, the lass from the North of Westeros loved to haggle.  It was a guilty pleasure.

With her senses always attuned to her surrounding Arya moved forward down the streets and alleyways to get to the various businesses that were thickly packed providing services to the sailors, captains, passengers and the merchants that catered to those seamen and helped to sell the produce coming and leaving the docks of Ragman’s Harbor.

Arriving at her destination, Arya looked up at the sign over the doorway.  Arya always cocked her eyebrow at it.  The name was invocative of what was sold inside.  Purgatory Potions.  She liked it.  Made her feel like she was bartering with Mephistopheles himself.  That she might be purchasing items that held the power of life and death.  In fact she was doing precisely that.

The former High Princess of the House of Stark had picked up a small carrying cart and picked up ingredients she would need to make elixirs for the care of the faces she would be transporting with her.  The potions not as strong as from her Temple but good enough for the long journey.  Other ingredients to concoct various poisons other than Strangler which was the hallmark of the House of Black and White.  The poison used to leave a calling card.  The death a certainty but the cause debatable and never provable.  

Arya walked up and down the aisle picking out more ingredients to make soaps for the body and others for her clothes.  She bought other items to make some simple perfumes if seduction became necessary. 

The Faceless Man bought herbs and rare spices to make poultices and creams to fight infection.  Other ingredients to fight skin blights and fungus infections.  She bought aloe for sunscreen protection.  Other herbs to help with digestion.  Only her god knew what she might be asked to ingest.

As she walked up and down between the stacks and display stands of various items Arya recalled her words with the Kindly Man who was by the doors of their temple of black and white when she left two mornings ago.  For a few moments Arya was again the ten year old who had entered into the Temple of the Faceless Men with not one but two coins of Valar Morghulis.  She still remembered the shock on his face quickly hidden.

She had wondered since then what those two coins had meant to the Kindly Man.  What had been his thoughts when she entered through the doors of Temple of Black and White?  He had seen the first coin she had given and not seemed surprised.  It was when she produced the second coin that she saw the moment of shock.  It may have been the only time she saw her Leader truly astonished.

In the here and now Arya recalled her most recent conversation with the Kindly Man.  In his soft but kind voice the High Priest of the Faceless Men spoke to her “One must begin my child.  You have much to do.  The dragon is restless.”

“I think not honorable store.  Viserys is a fraud and his sister has yet to be molded.”

“Still.  It is time.  Do you delay?”

With a cock of her head she regarded a man she dare call a friend in this house where friendships did not exist.  “You know I prepare now for later success.  A pyramid cannot be risen up if the foundation is weak and no pylons have been set.  The charge you have bequeathed to me is onerous.  I will not fail.  Thus, my preparations.”

“I see” the kindly spoke even softer a near whisper.  A smile on his face.  “I was merely checking on you my favorite disciple.  I feel you just might succeed.”

Arya had left the kindly man.  As she passed the doors she stopped and looked to her right.  The deep shadows of the alcove on each side of the door impenetrable.  “I know you are there”. 

Jaqen H’ghar stepped out into the faint light of the torches of the main chamber on the first floor of the Temple of Black.  The leader of the House of Black and White tilted his head in acknowledgement.  Only the Kindly Man and the Wharf King could have felt his presence besides this young woman. 

She saw him studying her.  Arya returned his gaze evenly.

“Go Arya.  You have a ruler to guide to their destiny.”  She had left without a backward glance.

The young Faceless Man finished her purchases.  The clerk behind the counter looked at the items she had bought.  He said nothing.  The man knew what some of the possible combinations of ingredients could create.  He was also sure of who bought the items from his boss’s store.  It paid to ask no questions.

Arya was moving back to her apartment.  She was gathering the items she would need for her journey there.  She would purchase her other items tomorrow.

As she walked down the street she turned into the side alley that would lead to the street her residence was on.  She had taken ten steps down the currently deserted small street.  She threw her carry bag to the side swirling down and to the left.  Arya whipped her rapier out of its sheath in a fluid motion.  She came up with her arm and knocked aside the point of the rapier moving to pierce her heart with her own rapier.  The collision of hardened steel slamming into hardened brother sounded in the air in a high pitched shriek.

She was up with her rapier held straight out in front of her with her right hand up her arm cocked for balance.  Her opponent in the same stance.  They moved back and forth the narrow alleyway not allowing for the opponents to circle each other.  They feinted and stepped forward to pierce their foe.  Their rapiers making swirling blocking motions to knock aside the steel seeking to pierce the bodies of their opponents. 

The two antagonists spoke no words.  Their total concentration on each other.  Arya’s foe made a short wide cut and then jumped forward swishing his sword back and forth in violent slashes.  Arya backed stepped her sword slashing forward and to the side in the opposite direction to countervail the assault.  She then took her blade low and hit the blade of her assailant up and moved in instantly thrusting forward.  Her opponent lurched back just out of range and dove to the side and back rolling on the ground and coming up with his sword working fast back and forth and then lunging forward.

Arya’s blade flicked the other blade to the right and slightly up and ran her blade along the rapier of her opponent.  His eyes went large jerking back as the blade just missed his cheek.  Arya flicked her blade up a foot and slashed down.  The man spun and held his blade crossways against his free arm to block her slash attack.  He grunted using the stiffened blade to push Arya back and attack.

The two assailants attacked and parried back and forth up and down the alley.  Citizens who turned to go down the alley turned around and hurriedly left not wanting to be caught up in the savage duel.  The sounds of two swords constantly colliding violently loud in the small confines of the alleyway.

Arya spun down to a low squat and pivoted towards her opponent.  The rapier point of her foe was two inches in front of her throat as he had twisted to the left and arched his back to get his blade in position to deliver the killing blow.

“I have you now!”

“Look down” Arya whispered.

The man did and his eyes showed his consternation.  A fraction of an inch away from his cock was Arya’s rapier point angled up. 

“I will thrust up and pierce your cock and testicle.  My blade will then travel up perforating your bowels leaking out ichor and causing septic shock if you were to survive immediate death.  My blade will continue up piercing the right lower lobe of your lung and continue traveling up piercing liver and spleen.  The bleeding profuse.  Then my rapier will piece your heart and the upper left lobe of your other lung.”

The man looked into Arya’s eyes.  “I see.  Is that any way to greet you instructor Arya Stark.”

“Why I do believe it is Syrio Forel.”

The man smirked and stepped back.  He still had a sour look on his face.

“You know it gets confusing with all the names you leave behind as you abandon your sacred oaths” Arya told her former teacher off handedly.  “You may go by Syrio Forel now and I will call you that but to me you will always be your true name.  First Sword.  Of course you then became one.  And then you abandoned that duty as well.”

“My memory is slightly different my _almost_ equal.”

Arya glared at him.

“It was my Sealord that led to our downfall.  He refused my sage council.”  The man looked troubled for a moment.  “Great was his fall—it swept me away with him.  The man whose face I took was a cad anyways.  I was restoring honor to his name … but—alas I ran out of time.”

“You always seem to run out of time First Sword.”

“Syrio” the man sniffed.  “Stop being a cad Direwolf.”

Arya arched an eyebrow.  She found she both liked and disliked her given Name.  She was not quite ready to be that name.  It both fit and did not fit.  She was conflicted.  The time was coming but not yet. 

“Touché.  Why do I have the pleasure of your appearance _Syrio_.”  You know you are persona non grata with just about everyone.  Quite an achievement I might add.  Why have you put yourself in peril my former sword instructor?”

“The Princess will face many challenges of the soul and dangers of the body Arya.  Her path is dangerous and full of peril.  Will you be able to help her navigate that maelstrom and not lose herself within the storm?  The vortex of her passions and fire of her parentage will seek to drive her into cruelty and barbarism.  It is her race’s curse.  Add to that the madness that seems to have crept into House Targaryen.”

“Then I must succeed mustn’t I.”

“Almost all the prophecies and foretelling say she will either die in her attempts at greatness, go mad like her father or in achieving her goals she becomes the thing she hates and will rise up a second cruel despotic Valyria.”

Arya listened to Syrio.  Her face calm betraying nothing.

“How can you succeed?”

“That I do not know.  I can only play my part.  I believe her heart is true.  Love will guide her in the end.  Who it will be I do not know.  There are prophecies that say she will succeed and will lead in a great golden age.  I will trust those.”

“Those are precious few.”

“Still.  I must believe in them.”

“They say she will lie with a wolf Arya.”

“Yes.  I believe the prophecies mean my brother Robb or my nephew Jon.  When the fates say, I will guide her to them.  When the time is right.  She will know who her mate shall be.”

Syrio started to speak but stilled.  He looked at Arya curiously for some reason.  He shook his head.  After an awkward pause he continued “The weight of prophecy is against you.  Can you succeed?  It seems that the weight of destiny says otherwise.”

“There is no other path for me.  I am No One first but I am still Arya Stark deep down.  I am the Direwolf of my given name.  You know this and have groomed me because of it.  I will succeed.  There is no other option for me.  My success will be her success.  The Dragon Lord will arise.”


	4. Rendezvous

**Whispers**

**Rendezvous**

 

With slow dips of both shoulders Arya worked the double beavertail canoe paddle. Her arms working in a pattern to silently cut the blades of the paddle into the water.  Her hands on the shaft of the paddle spread out on the paddle to grip the shaft about two feet from the throat of the paddle.  She used this grip to angle the blade as it cut through the water to propel the canoe forward silently.  Like ghosts in the early morning mist that rose up off the water of the canals of Braavos ethereal wraiths writhed seeking to escape their watery chains.  The newborn wraiths seeking to slip free into the moist air to join their calling brothers who had already escaped their mother’s grasp.

The Faceless Man had set off from the hidden alcove beneath the Green Leaf Grocery.  The aperture allowed the owner to ship fresh produce up into the store without disturbing customer flow.  Arya kept her canoe tied up here.  This was her mode of transport she used to slowly penetrate the doomed Drowned Town.  The store one of several local grocery stores that catered to this middle income section Braavos.  The bridges over the canals in this area were more utilitarian than ostentatious.  The hand rails were only gilded with copper or tin and not the silver and gold of the higher income areas of Braavos.

The canoe silently sliced through the water heading towards the Drowned Town.  Arya put several open circular wicker baskets in the front of the canoe.  These were filled with shucked oyster and clam shells.  Passerby traffic on the canals would see the shells and just assume they were fresh.   The sun had half clawed up over the mountains that surrounded Braavos.  Traffic was building slowly on the waterways.  The city was coming to life for another day.

Small skiffs and barges pushed by Arya in her canoe.  Pole men moved the morning fish and shellfish to the vendors who would be selling the morning catch.  The fresh catch to feed the morning fare in an hour and into the noon hour.  Other traffic was transporting clothing and raw material for clothe production.  Other larger barges were moving crates of items from warehouses to the vendors who would be selling the items to the general public.

Interspersed with the traffic goods to market and stores were Gondoliers.  The taxi pole men transporting business men and women to their work.  Others were transporting women who were taking their children to their schools or to day care centers.  Braavos was a city of workers and they needed to work.  Their children cared for by women who kept them fed and happy during the day while teaching them their numbers and letters if of the more genteel classes.

Arya moved down the canals.  The large transport canal she was on now, Bronze Canal, was for heavier barges with deeper drafts.  This canal and its brothers created to free the smaller canals for human transport and the whisking of small sets of produce from market to market or seller.  She went down it for five city blocks.  Then she cut to the left down an access canal that cross connected the major canal waterways.  These narrow canals were used by small skiffs and canoes to let the local populace to move about without going down long waterways to get over to the next block.  The narrow canals also used to dump chamber pots and trash into. 

One made sure to keep their head on a swivel traversing these small access canals.  The smell was most unpleasant.  Arya’s nose crinkling at the offensive smells.

Arya came out from between the five story buildings and now was on the Idle Isle Canal that slowly bent to the west by north to come out on the shore side of this section of Braavos directly across the first blocks of the Drowned Town.  The sun was just rising over the mountains behind Arya the first direct sunrays of the new day striking the City.

The long shadows still ruled this area of the world but Arya could see the highest heights of the buildings above her now glowing in the first sunrays of the day.  The colors normally muted and washed out.  Not now.  For the next fifteen minutes, colors burst forth from the top stories of the buildings.  For this short while they were filled with life and the possibilities of tomorrow.  Arya knew in fifteen minutes the bright colors would seem to fade into sleep only to awaken on the morrow’s new sun.

The mist was fraying now as the air warmed.  Visibility slowly increasing.  This was good with the increased traffic plying the waterways of Braavos.  More Gondoliers on the water taking the waking populace to their morning destinations.

Arya angled her canoe towards the Drowned Town.    The traffic was heavy now in this area of Braavos.  Vendors were rushing to get their fare to their vendors.  The citizenry of Braavos populating a sudden algae bloom of Gondolas and their Gondoliers anxious to deliver their fares to their destinations.

Arya observed the outfits of the Gondoliers.  There were two main guilds of the Gondoliers.  The families of Nestymion and Brenatis.  All the freelance pole men hoping to be accepted into the two oldest most venerable guilds.  Arya was not into ostentatiousness.  She observed the mainly young men in their gaudy outfits as they poled their gondolas.

The bright clothing meant to catch the eye. The two guilds had a distinctive color and strip to the clothing of their Gondoliers.  One was a cotton top with short sleeves that had thin black and grey bands down the pullover shirt. These men wore broad brimmed hats with no red tassels. The other outfit had tops but with long sleeves with both the body and sleeves of the shirt having wide bands of grey and black. These men’s hats had small brims and a red velvet bond around the crown of the hat with red tassels hanging down the back of the hats that fluttered in the breeze wafting down the canals.  Many of the tassels weaved in various patterns according to traditional family weavings.

There were other guilds of Gondoliers but the families of Nestymion and Brenatis garnered most of the traffic.  The family Guild of Pahrah had a slice of the market but it was a minority share.  There of course were many freelance Gondoliers but they had none of the benefits and sense of security that the Guilds provided.

The Faceless Man moved their canoe forward among the other traffic on the canals.  The pulse of life washing over Arya let her feel alive with the rest of the City.  Though the House of Black and White served death that did not prevent its members from celebrating life if they chose.

The warming air felt good on Arya’s exposed wrists and hands.  She was dressed in a long sleeved blouse with flaring wrists.  The blouse with a small open V in the font with long draw strings down to her waist.  With her flat chest she was not drawing attention to herself.  She wore a long sleeved pull over coat that was cut short to keep her midriff free.  She wore a long brown skirt wrapped around her waist by a checkered scarf.  She had on work sandals.  The outfit keeping her warm in the morning but open enough to not overheat as the heat increased with the coming day.

Her hair was up in two braided coils on each side of her head. Her hair parted in the middle.  She paddled on like she had business to attend to.  No one paid her any attention.  Arya used her training to look around herself surreptitiously.  She was not being followed.  She turned her canoe now directly towards and into the Drowned City and entered a canal between two tired looking buildings.  The pilings underneath them sagging with age the building now tilting towards each other like lovers yearning to embrace the other after an age apart.

The most recently submerged buildings still having a half-life to them.  Residents and vendors occupying the upper floors still not flooded.  The Drowned City slowly growing with each passing of the tide.

Arya paddled silently.  Her ears attuned to her surroundings.  The sound of the waves washing by on the morning tide sighing like a tired lover. The constant lapping rhythmic.  No other sounds came to Arya’s ears.  Her own oar silently cutting into the dirty water.  The oar seeming to disappear into the brownish water until her stroke lifted the oar proving once more it still existed before again dipping into the water.  Arya turned down one drowned street after another turning right and left.  Each change of direction letting her look behind her out the corner of her eye.

She continued to paddle into the heart of the Drowned City.  A heart that was calcifying as it slowly submerged to its watery death.  Each block that Arya penetrated into the increasingly dilapidated buildings the further she moved from the life of the Braavos.  Here there was no true future only the increasingly forgotten past.

She saw no one who she considered a threat.  She saw other lonely paddlers in various type of water craft moving on along the drowned canals.  These were the poor and dispossessed that lived in this ruined city within a city.  Here they found shelter and surcease in this ruined echo of the past.  People in these canals left each other alone.  They were too busy clawing an existence from this cruel world.  The tax collectors knew of the people living here but it was simply not worth trying to flush them out to collect taxes on.

The paddle ceased working the water.  Head cocked over Arya listened.  She let the very air waft over her face and hands.  No.  She was not being followed.  One could never be vigilant enough when you were a Faceless Man.  Death always lurking around the next corner they often told each other.  The small craft glided like silk on the ripples of the canal water.  The boat traveling twenty yards as the Faceless Man communed with the dead city.  It was fitting.  A person who worshiped death at one with a city of the dead.

She had come to this relic of the past to meet with the mentor of her father.  The man who had set first her father and then his daughter on the paths they now both followed.  Her father now a rouge agent seeking to keep balance and peace in Westeros.  His daughter now a high priest in the House of Death.  Both working in their own ways to achieve the balance of life.

She had reached her first destination.  She took her paddle and sculled the canoe sharply to the right.  She went in through a broken wall of a former millinery business reading the faded and chipped sign over the doors that were still attached on the rotten lintel by rusted hinges.  The ruined doors hanging at tired angles still clinging to life.  The left door had drooped more since Arya’s last visit.  Its death imminent.  The rusted metal losing its battle with gravity.  Soon the door would drop into the water to disappear from the world of light.  The world of man forgotten as the rotted wood settled in its watery grave.    

Slowly the canoe entered into the silent crypt of the building.  A long lost corpse returning home Arya thought with a smirk.  She had no fear of the dark world she was entering.  Arya’s rebellious past held her in good stead now.  She had come to the House of Black and White willingly and openly.  She had fled the life her mother was preparing for her in Westeros.  Her father had given her the opportunity to find a life that she could meet own on her terms.  To rise or fall on the merits of her abilities.

Yes, she had come willingly.  Still, the young fallen princess had found it hard to submit her will.  She had not realized the order of Faceless Men were like an elite military force.  They had to break you down to rise you back up in form they could use.  A form hardened and honed to a razor’s edge.  She had been honed she smiled.  It had just taken many more strikes of the blacksmith’s mallet hammer to forged into the Faceless Man she now was.  She was like the rarest of iron ore.  More resilient and less malleable. 

One of her punishments for her defiance was the blinding of her sight for nearly eight months.  The priests had many reasons for her blinding.  They had thought it would break her.  It had only made her stronger.  Their goal had been twofold.  One was to teach her humility.  The second to sharpen her senses.  They had succeeded beyond their comprehension.  Now she had skills only the Wharf King had.  She took all the pain and suffering she had suffered to only make herself stronger.

The dim light from the portal knocked in the wall of the building gradually faded.  The Drowned Town covered nearly three square miles.  She was about to enter into a realm rarely visited.  It was said to be inhabited by monsters and ghosts.  Eighty years ago a fire had swept through fifty city blocks ruining and collapsing many of the structures that now formed burial mounds.  Other buildings tilted listlessly waiting for only the slightest random caress of the wind to bring them toppling down.

To get to this area you had to traverse a labyrinth of ruined buildings.  All the canal entry ways had been blocked by burned and collapsed buildings.  She moved deeper into the lair of darkness and decrepit desolation.  The light from the entryway growing fainter with each heartbeat.  She began to hear more drops of condensation from the ceiling above.  The drops echoing like the drunken slurred words of the drowned god of the Iron Islands. 

Arya went down a hall where she worked her oar blade tips into the crumbling walls to move forward.  She then came into a large room.  The inky darkness complete.  It was like she was in a sealed casket or the unlit crypt of her ancestral home.  She heard the groaning and creaking of the pillars and jousts supporting the moldering layers of former human habitation above her head.  More water dripped onto the flat plains of the lagoon.  Drops hit her hooded head and onto her face.  The water cool and soothing.

Still she moved on.  Her time being blind had taught her to memorize distances by steps or the working of a paddle.  She moved from room to room and across buildings through doorways or where walls had fallen.  Small ribbons or islands of light slowly growing and then receding as she passed through alleyways between buildings before again entering the underworld of the Drowned City.

The Faceless Man was again in the center of a large room.  Arya ceased all motion and cocked her head listening.  The world was pitch black.  Only the sounds of past human habitations groaning under the weight of decay and the sounds of water dripping filled this cavern.  Her craft drifted forward for several minutes.  Arya took her paddle and turned it so her paddle blades were horizontal to the water.  She now splashed the blades into the water right and left of her canoe.  The sound almost shocking in the still dank air.

The Faceless Man concentrated listening to the echoes. The right and left splashes giving her a stereo of echoes to gauge her surroundings.  Nothing was amiss.  She had long ago rowed around this large room memorizing all in it.  Nothing was in the room that had not been there before.  The Wharf King with his clicks had taught her this secret of echo location.  She moved on.

Twenty minutes later she reached the edge of the burn zone.  She looked to the epicenter a seven hundred yards away.  The zone surrounded by the fallen detritus of ruined buildings that formed the edge of the burn zone.  Sunlight streamed in through a broken out bay window that the water line came up to half way on the frame.  She rowed her canoe to the inside of the wall beside the broken out window frame.  She spied her destination. 

Somehow when the fire struck, a spire risen to the religion of the Jogos Nhai, nomadic raiders of the Far East was spared.  It was surrounded as if by a lagoon.  The buildings surrounding it burned to water level and now swallowed by that water.  Other buildings having collapsed around the spire to form a harbor within a harbor.  The piled detritus of the fallen building small islands standing lonely vigil around the spire.

The Moonspire rose nearly a hundred and fifty feet into the air.  It was twenty feet across.  The temple to the religion of the Moonsingers was tiled in what had once been blinding snow white marble though many were now darkened with algae and general filth.  Other tiles had fallen off the tower all together.  So, now, instead of gleaming white perfection the spire now looked like the moon face itself.  

Dark splotches covered the circular edifice with seeming bright white islands where some tiles still held their original luster.  The fallen tiles leaving behind dark valleys that dotted the face of the moon that was the Moonspire.  The top of the spire was done in silver and sapphire. 

The spire seen outside of this watery grave.  Still no one came here.  Superstition had an extreme power over the human mind.  The spire had been well constructed and still stood strong.  The destruction around the ancient edifice and the legends of monsters kept the normal vandals at bay.

With sure movements Arya tied her canoe up to a projecting timber.  Arya put on the backpack made of water resistant material with the animal grease thickly smeared on it and the creases waxed.  She had no reason to strip nude for this endeavor.  She then slipped into the water taking her hollowed out reed with her.  Looking out over the large open expanses of water she calmed her breathing.  The collapsed buildings and sea grass had made a home for barracuda that had somehow made a home here in a land north of their native habitat.  The shallow waters keeping the water warm enough to keep the barracuda alive and thriving.

These fearsome predators were what people called the “Ghosts of the Moon.”  Arya had seen them flitting underneath her canoe on her first expeditions to this spire.  All could see it but the reputation kept all away.  Men’s fears kept them away.  Their eyes seeing what they thought they should see.  All except Arya.  She had learned the identity of the fish in her studies at the Hidden Tome.  The knowledge had removed her fear.  She knew to swim slow and not wear items that were shiny so as to not attract the fishes’ attention.  She had no wounds bleeding.  She had learned through her readings that the barracuda loved to hide in the tall bottom grasses of the lagoon.  To suddenly strike their prey from below.

Taking a deep breath Arya swam out the ruined window and into the area of devastation.  She had trained hard to develop the ability to hold her breath and swim actively underwater.  It had allowed her to penetrate several contracts defenses for her kills.  She was a quarter of the way to the tower when she neared the murky surface while she tilted her head over.  The long hollowed out reed was put in her mouth the other end jutted out the water surface.  She took a long life saving breath of air.  Renewed, she dove down and swam onward.  Thrice more she refreshed her oxygen.

Her swimming thus, kept her hidden from any scanning eyes looking for intruders.  Arya had mapped out were the grass beds were and avoided them and with them the patrolling barracuda looking for their next meals.

She reached the spire twelve feet down and entered the access door that had been used for maintenance.  She went through the aperture and kicked to the surface of the water.  With the sunlight that wafted through the small windows set at every twenty feet Arya located the spiral iron staircase that circled around the inside of the tower.  She swam over to it with one quick stroke and pulled herself and her backpack up onto the stairs. 

She stood for a minute feeling the water run down her body.  Arya looked down at her sopping wet clothes as they added their own droplets of water to the cascades dripping off her face and hands.  She looked up at the circling staircase.  The iron steps were still sound after so many years.  She knew that copper, nickel and phosphorous had been mixed into the iron to give it resistance to the elements.  She started to walk up to the parapet on the top of the tower.  The tiles on the inside of the tower showed age but were holding up better than the tiles on the outside of the tower.

Echoes ricocheted back and forth in the enclosed space.  The sounds of each step she took echoed in the tower.  Arya looked up and down while the echoes whispered to her.  The past below, the future above and the present underneath her feet.  She knew she was on the cusp of something large.  If she succeeded in her nascent plans she would be shaping the future.  Altering what was to be into something alien and different.  Would history remember her as an angel that shepherded in a better age or the mother of a horror that should never had been given birth.

Arya ran her hand on the iron rail.  She felt iron flakes peel off and float away to the water below.  She watched them the spiral down in a tattered flight like jays drunk on fermented cherries.  She shook her head and continued up the stairs.  A few minutes later she came out onto the platform of the turret capped with a silver dome that was angled up into a spire above her.  The windows had long ago fallen out. 

Hidden in shadows Arya looked out over the world of Braavos.  To the west was the titan of Braavos guarding the City as it had for centuries.  Near it, the Arsenal that provided Braavos its naval strength.  She looked down at the Drowned Town and the fading buildings.  She looked to the immediate East and neighborhood of Brogman’s Corner.  To the south and east was Ragman harbor.  The ship’s masts looked like denuded trees in a hurricane with their sails furled and lashed tight.

When Arya looked further to the east she saw the domes, turrets and towers of various temples on the Isle of the Gods.  Her own home was there.  Arya contemplated that.  She would be gone for many months at a minimum when she truly began her mission.  Who would she be when her mission was over.  She would be shaping the future and she was sure it would shape her.  The girl from the North of Westeros broke the seal to her satchel she had coated in animal grease and put a bead of bees wax on the seal.  The seal was broken and she pulled out a couple of sandwiches, salted herring, onions, a pepper and cucumber. 

She opened the flask of water and drank as she ate her meal.  She leaned down on the sill that lined the turret top and looked out over her home.  She still remembered Winterfell vividly but her home was here now.  She was of Braavos.  She was a Faceless Man.  She ate her lunch and then reached into her satchel and pulled out an orange and lemon.  She ate her fruits enjoying the tang.  She rested her elbows on the edge of the turret and looked at the aqueduct that had the name ‘The Sweetwater River’.  She followed its path to the Moon Pool where it emptied near the Iron Bank.

A pensive sigh escaped the Faceless Man’s lips.  Would she be able to come back she wondered.  Something in her told her no.  Did that mean she was to die?  Why else would she not come home?  Arya took a deep breath again and let the breeze blow over her face.  Her clothes now dry.  She sat back down with her back on the turret wall and relaxed.  She would enjoy this last day before she began her labors in earnest. She became drowsy warmed by the heat generated in the tiles from the midday sun.

The faceless man ruminated over her plans and continued to refine them.  She had many complicated factors to orchestrate.  She had to make all the pieces work together and somehow fit.  It would take time.  A lot of time.  First she had to undo the damage that Illyrio had done and get Khal Drogo back in the fold.  After that it was a crap shot.  How in the hell do you get a fourteen year old woman on the throne of Westeros!

She would succeed.  She would find a way.  Arya was nothing if not confident.  She fell asleep.

When she awoke she looked at the sky and by the positioning of the sun saw that it was late afternoon.  The sun was angling to the western horizon now.  Arya stood back up and looked to the west.  She saw with her mind the land so far away.  The land of her birth.  Westeros.  If her plans succeeded Daenerys Targaryen would travel back to that continent and take her rightful place on the throne of Westeros.

She wondered how events were occurring in her former homeland.  She knew who sat on the Iron Throne but did not follow events closely.  She made a point of not following the particulars of Westeros.  Of the North she had a passing knowledge but nothing below the Neck of Westeros.  The other Houses of Westeros meant nothing to her.

Only once had she been given a contract in Westeros.  She grimaced over that contract.  She had stood trial for it.

Arya had been thankful that no more contracts had been given her in Westeros.  Emotions were suppressed but not removed.  She missed her father and brothers and even her younger sister Sansa the prime and proper one.  Branda her youngest sister was a sweet kid when she left.  She was so positive despite her congenital birth defect that left her a cripple.  She knew she had an even younger brother.  Rickon was a handful she heard.

What were they now?  Were they happy?  They were all still alive she knew.  She followed her family that much.  She had an eagle’s view on her family.  Up high on the thermals she gazed down upon them through the contacts her Order maintained.  She knew basic facts about her family but from afar.  A grim resolve came over her face.  Was her mother still a battleax?  That stopped her musing on her family.

Arya looked past the mighty Titan and the low ridged pine covered mountains that encircled the lagoon of Braavos.  Her mental sight taking wing like the albatross.  Three hundred and fifty miles across the Narrow Sea were the fingers of Arryn.  To the north and west of that was her homeland the North.

Would Daenerys treat her homeland fair and just?  How could she tell?  Arya thought on it but had no answers.  She snorted.  I could marry her and help guide her. _Rrrriiggghhttt_ Arya drawled to herself.  A faceless man as the Queen’s moral compass.  She was probably straight as a razor anyways. 

Time slowly passed.  She watched the sun move towards the horizon.  As she watched the Titan let out its monstrous roar setting off the new hour.  Like most of Braavos she tuned out his roar unless focused on it.  Arya knew it would sound once more for the new hour and one last terrible groaning and grinding blast to single the setting of the sun.

On the marrow she would begin her journeys and trials.  Before that though, she had to perform on last task in Braavos.  Syrio’s words had led her to question the mettle of a certain Princess.  She needed to see if Syrio’s doubts were in any way founded.  She would then leave Braavos to begin her labors.

Arya watched the sun move towards the horizon.  Long after the Titan signaled the hour before dusk Arya prepared to visit her mentor.  Since her meeting with the young Targaryen Princess, thoughts had been swirling in her mind.  Thoughts coalescing and coming into focus.  She was sure now that the Wharf King had somehow foreseen this.  _But how_?  _Why set this up_?  Had it started all the way back with her father?  His intervention in the life of House Stark for this moment.

She walked back down the staircase making slow circles back to the water.  Part of her observations in the tower top was to survey the surrounding environs.  There had been no one to be seen.  Superstition kept most away.  The barracuda kept the rest away.  They were fast and aggressive.  Staying away from the seagrass where they liked to hide and ambush kept the risk of attack minimal.  Humans were too large to attack if barracuda could not feel safe in ambushing from below.

The water felt chilled as she slipped back into the well of blackness.  She took a deep breath submerged with her now empty satchel strapped to her back.  Waste not, want not Arya thought.  The lesson from her father still resonated with the girl from the North.  She kicked her legs down and was soon at the door to the tower and once more back out to the lagoon itself.  She put the reed to her mouth and went to the surface and took a deep breath of sweet air. 

With strong strokes the Faceless Man swam to the west side of the lagoon surrounding the Tower to the Moon as Arya called her personal sanctuary.  Her body rising four times for deep breaths of air before kicking to dive below the surface again.  She had communed with the elements and her spirit.  With her visit to her mentor she would be ready to take off on her adventure.  She had been tasked to take a Princess and have her crowned as Queen of Westeros.

Soon Arya reached the first block of still standing buildings on that side of the fire zone.  Arya slipped into a doorway that was open with the waterline three quarters of the way up into the structure.  Arya swam through the building.  She knew she had not been followed but she would not be surprised if a Wharf Rat had not spied her out.  The Wharf King’s entourage were quite capable.

Arya worked her way through the building and came out a window that was just submerged.  She worked down the street underwater and entered the next building she would swim through.  The sun was setting now and it was getting darker.  The shadows like dark lovers of the Titan growing longer with each second the sun moved to kiss the horizon and then take surcease in her sweet embrace.

The small narrow drowned roads between buildings now dark.  Arya had become a darker shadow among shadows.  She moved down streets till she came to a building she could swim through to get to the next block.  This saved both time and kept her out of sight.

A mark of minutes later true darkness was beginning to rule the sky.  She swam in the middle of the canal now.  Her body slicing through the water silently.  She looked right and left only seeing the dark outlines of buildings and the poles that had been street signs and oil lamps.

She swam into a building and climbed up a small stairwell to the third floor that was now just above the waterline.  She walked on the wooden planks that groaned and sagged underneath her steps.  The wood saturated with water and beginning to rot in earnest.  The floor would be stable for a few years yet.

She came to the next building wall.  Here the wall had indeed partially collapsed.  Through the hole Arya worked her body to the next building.  She then went up the stairwell to the roof.  She looked up at the stars now coming out to play in the now dark sky.  She saw the Huntress and her pack of hounds chasing the Stag across the sky.  She moved on moving from roof top to roof top.  Here the blocks were tightly packed with many buildings running in from different angles to form thick warrens of hard pressed together buildings.

Arya moved like a ghost from building to building.  She kept close to chimneys, divider walls, hutches on roof and the large upraised skylights.  She was like a walking ghost come back to life from the Drowned City’s glorious past.  She came up onto a large flat roof.  This had been a playhouse when this city was alive.  She titled her head.  She heard the ethereal notes of an age past.  The notes sweet and pleasing to the ear.  The Faceless Man followed the string of wafting notes on the night time breeze.  She entered into an access door in a hutch and descended down the rails that ran straight down to the roof of the theater pit below.

A smile on her face Arya followed the notes onwards.  The melody clear now.  Played in the minor key.  A sad hypnotic melody calling one to their doom.  It was of a song she had never heard.  Most probably an overture for a play that had been played on the stage beneath her.  She walked softly as she had been trained.  Stealth was always a Faceless Man’s best friend.  Like a ghost Arya moved towards the hypnotic melody calling her forward to her supposed doom.

Stacks of detritus were on the still strong roof of the theater.  There were also small cutouts placed here and there to allow the staff that operated the weights that opened and closed the curtains and allowed actors too seemingly fly on thin wires attached to the ceilings and the upper walls of the theatre.  She found a rope still attached to the weighted sack on the raised stage.  Arya silently climbed down the rope to step on the stage.  The melodic notes calling Arya ever forward.  

Her clothes now only damp.  She ignored the cool air.  The cloth no longer clinging to her body.

Coldness was of the mind and the mind could be controlled.  She moved across the stage with silent steps and entered into a side hall that allowed actors and dancers to access the stage.  With footfalls that made no sound Arya moved down the hall.  The notes becoming clearer with each step.  The music delicate and ethereal.  The music sublimely beautiful.  She saw bright light coming out of an adjoining room on the right side of the hall.

Arya turned into the room and stopped.  In the middle sat the Wharf King in a high backed wooden chair.  In front of him was a classical harp that he leaned forward to run his fingers up and down the strings of the column and body.   The harp leaned back so the knee of the harp was resting lightly on his broad strong shoulders.  His feet hit the seven pedals to modulate the vibration of the forty-seven strings he was playing.  His hands flowing with a beautiful grace as they moved forward and back plucking and strumming the strings.

The man’s large hands a definite advantage.  He played full ascending and descending glissandos that were magical to Arya’s ears.  He continued to play for a minute before stopping the harp forward onto its foot.  The music slowly faded away till all that was left was memories of beautiful melodies.

The room was lit by a plethora of lit candles on all the flat surfaces.  Their flames ethereal in the room.  Their many flickering flames magical to Arya’s eyes.

The man who had played the harp turned his head his eyes covered by a thin folded strip of white silk.

“As always, it is a pleasure to meet the daughter of my favorite student.  A young woman who has grown as mighty as her father.”

With a smirk on her face Arya kept silent.

“Ahhhhh jealousy.  Who is my favorite student I do wonder?”

The large man stood up towering over the harp with his six foot seven inch frame.  He tapped his chin with his finger.  He then sighed.

“Arya.  I thought you were above such trivial games.”

“I am not.  Someday you need to put me in front of my father” the young woman spoke in a teasing voice.  “I so wonder how you do it.  You and Syrio taught me how to walk on rice paper and leave no tear.  I am as silent as death that I worship.”

“Mayhap” the man said with a humorous tone.  “The underworld has many levels and mysteries you have yet to learn.”

“What brings you to my humble abode?”  He spread his arms wide.  “All that I have is yours.”

Slowly Arya turned around.  On the back wall was a low table piled high with cut meats, fresh vegetables, black bread and cut wheels of cheese.  She saw several urns filled with water and ails she was sure.

Arya shook her head.  She had requested this meeting and yet the Wharf King acted as if he was surprised she was here now.  _Were others coming_?  The mentor of her father had warned her she realized.  She would not be surprised if others were to appear.  This a momentous time.  Faceless Men were harbingers of great change the people of Braavos said.  They associated their order with negative imports but the Faceless Men knew better.  Arya focused her senses and slowly turned her head.

“You are most impolite inviting Syrio Forel to our meeting” Arya called out.

A loud snort came from a dark alcove that was in the right far side of the room.  The fallen First Sword of Braavos revealed himself.  He wore a blouse top and brown slacks with a loose open vest.  His Valyrian steel rapier at his hip.

“It is most disconcerting how you do that Arya.”  She did not tell her former sword teacher that she had worn a face he once repaired.  She had learned to feel his presence by the blood connection she now shared with her friend.  A woman cherished her secrets.

“I am disappointed in you Arya.  You did not invite Jaqen Hagar to our festivities.”  The blind man pointed up to the ceiling.  The left side of the room had no ceiling.  The high joists of the main roof barely visible up in the darkness.

From the inky shadows movement was now seen.  A figure worked himself down a thick hawser used to support weighted sacks that controlled the curtains near the left wall.  Hand by hand Jaqen H’ghar worked his way down the rope.

Arya saw that he had on his true face.  He like Arya eschewed wearing other faces unless needed for his work on a contract or espionage or similar task.  He used facial muscle control for much of his work like Arya.

Jaqen H'ghar wore his hair long with one side colored white and the other red.  Why he liked to be so ostentatious Arya would never understand.  A Faceless Man was supposed to disappear into the background.  One never knew when an ambush might be sprung.  Jaqen was nothing if not supremely confident.

He used dyes to change color quickly which all Faceless Men kept on their bodies for quick use when necessary.  He had high cheekbones and a strong nose with chiseled chin.  He was an extremely handsome man who appeared to be in his mid-thirties though all of Arya’s masters were older than they appeared.

When among his peers he spoke in his native dialect of Lorath, omitting names and avoiding first and second grammatical persons.

He glared at the Wharf King clearly miffed.  “One day I must insist you tell me how you do that?”

“I will on the day you rescind the contract on my head.”

The leader of the Faceless Men sighed.  “You know I can’t do that.  Your crimes are punishable by death.  You know one must maintain appearances.”  He paused.  An evil glint came to his eyes.  “It keeps you sharp too.  As long as you do not kill any of the pups stupid enough to actually try and assassinate you I will forebear.”

“And if I was to try and assassinate you?” the Wharf King shot back.  The tall man appeared to be in his early fifties.  He had a full beard that was only showing the first signs of white.  His back straight and strong.  His limbs like tree thick tree branches and his neck thick as a bull.  He cocked his head.

“Like that could happen.  Outside of this drowned ruined city I am Master.”

“Mayhap.”

“Alright.  Alright.  Stop the pissing match.  We all know why we are here.” 

As one they turned to Arya. 

Jaqen H’ghar spoke first “You should have let Daenerys Targaryen end her life.  That path, while full of death and murder was stable.  The events could be controlled.  The prophecies are clear on her.  She will start pure and in the end turn evil.  The dross of repeated failures and betrayals will turn her heart cold and dead.”

“She is indeed the Dragon reborn but she has no mentor.  No one to teach her what it means to be a Valyrian Dragon Lord.  In many ways that is good but still she is untampered.  She will try to rule from her heart when a fist is needed and will do the inverse when the heart must be listened to.”

“She will learn but it will not be fast enough.  It is said she will calm Valyria and build it up.  One Valyria was quite enough.”  Jaqen spoke with the finality of the crypt.

The Wharf King spoke up.  “You are true of these prophecies.  There are others though.  They are few but they speak of a golden age.”  He looked at Jaqen.  “Why not these prophecies?”

“I speak of many.  So many they overfill and spill out of one’s cupped hands.  You speak of a meager handful.  How can death take the heart and make it whole.  Death only takes and never gives.”

“I trust my Blind Visions” the Wharf King answered strongly.

“And what the hell are they” Jaqen barked in answer.

The Wharf King merely smiled an enigmatic smile.

Jaqen Hagar snorted.  “You have faith in a frail slip of girl.  It is most disconcerting.”

“Your prejudices blind you Jaqen” the Wharf King smiled back.  “Size means little.  In her resides greatness.  You will see.”

Jaqen glared at the man.  Then he laughed a bark of scorn.

“I see failure and death.  She should have died unremarked.  Now she bring others down with her to the grave.”

The tall figure of the Wharf King smiled down at Jaqen.  “We shall see I say.  The Direwolf will tame the Dragon.”

Arya’s forehead creased.  What were they talking about?

“Oh by the worthless gods are you still on that wheeze?!”

“Yes I am Jaqen.  You will eat your words.  You will see.”

“All I know is that I will assist my former student” Syrio Forel spoke up.  “I have waited many years to redeem myself.  I will not make the same mistakes again.  I will not turn a blind eye.”

Jaqen turned to look at Syrio.  “You don’t know who you serve.  You never have.”  He turned to look at Arya.  “I would be careful of this one’s support Direwolf.  He has never been true to anything or anyone.”

Arya could see the anger in Syrio.  He had fallen from grace in not one but two orders.  Arya thought she had come to understand why over the years.  Still she could not help but wonder.  Did she read the man correctly?  Weren’t Faceless Men trained to deceive any they chose to? 

Arya listened to her leader and her teacher talk about Daenerys Targaryen further.  They discussed her fate and the possible roads of her fate.  Arya knew it was her responsibility now.  She would not fail.  Failure for her was not an option.  They droned on with their musing and bickering with each other.  Arya went over again in her mind the tasks she needed to commence on the morrow.

The Wharf King voice rose up again catching Arya out of her introspection.  “We all know in our inner circle we did not mean to destroy old Valyria only reduce its magic to controllable proportions.  To allow the other City States to rise up and contain the power of the Freehold.  To have the Free Cities and Slave Cities garrote themselves and then we and our partners would have smashed what remained of the slave trade.  Sadly we destroyed all of Valyria along with all the innocents and at the same time annihilated our original leadership.”

“Most of what we know is second hand.  We must take the chance with Daenerys.  With Death at her side she will succeed.  We will succeed.”

“I do not trust this faith in Death as a consort to the Dragon Queen.  So many possibilities” Jaqen H’ghar spoke calmly.  “Her death was sure.  Her life is full of myriad possibilities.  Most of them dire.  You know this.”

Arya listened unconcerned and quite frankly bored now.

After nearly a quarter hour more of further bickering between the two men and Arya listening bemused the two men and woman left the Wharf King alone.  Each having said what they had to say and hear what was spoken by the other two.  Now each left to travel down the road of their destiny.   

“You can come out now my old friend?”

“I too must wonder how you do this my former pupil?” the Kindly Man asked the Wharf King.  The old man appearing from the dark shadows.

“I can’t give up all my secrets.  It keeps me safe.”

“I know.  So you think that Arya will succeed” the Kindly Man asked his protégé from long ago.

“Yes I do.  We have both watched Arya and Daenerys.  Arya since Eddard Stark gave her the two coins of passage and Daenerys since her birth.  My visions tell me that together they will lift Valyria up from ruin.  The Dragon Lords will fly again.”  The Wharf King  looked down on the Kindly Man.

“You know we will be executed if Jaqen ever knows our true designs and goals.  That we mean to raise Valyria up from ruin.  That together Arya and Daenerys will reverse what we unleashed those many years again.  That dragons again will fly thick in the sky. The magic of Valyria reborn.”

“I know.  Thus, we must be careful.  We both know it is worth the risk.  They together will establish a new world order.  Eddard will help them.  We will.  Syrio will.  In time Jaqen will.  We must merely live long enough to make it happen.  To let the truth become evident.”

The Kindly Man walked around the old stage silently clearly thinking.

“Still I agree with Jaqen on this.  The path is perilous.  What if Arya does not fall in love with Daenerys?  It will be her guidance that sets Daenerys on the path of light and life.  Arya in serving death while bring forth life.”

The Wharf King turned his bandaged eyes toward the Kindly Man.  “She is already in love with her.  She just doesn’t know it yet.”

“How can you be so sure?  Daenerys will feel the pull of heritage and tradition.  She will hide from her homosexual desires.  I doubt she is even aware of them.  I know the portents say that she is but how can we be sure.  All depends on that fact.  She will be encouraged at every turn to find males to be her consort.”

“True.  At first.  Arya will win her over.  She is strong, smart, witty and cunning.  She is also a ‘bad girl’.  Like most young women, Daenerys Targaryen is highly attracted to dark power.  Arya will win the day.  Even if she does not wish too.”

“Are you sure of your visions Wharf King or should I say Donovar Crooler”

“Please don’t use that name Jakor Sawler.  We both gave up our names long ago.”

For a few more minutes they discussed the probabilities of success.  Then the Kindly Man stepped into the shadows and was gone.

_I wonder how he does that_?  The Wharf King mused with eyebrows arched.  He was simply gone.  His old teacher did not fade but was simply gone.

The Wharf King knew that momentous events were near.  Westeros was at peace where there should have been war.  The power merely had to be brought to bear to rise the continent out of somnolence.  They were ignorant.  The Ice King was preparing.  He took the time afforded him to add to his strength.  The Slave Trade must be smashed.  Daenerys and Arya had many tasks ahead of them.

They would need help Wharf King felt.  Eddard his protégée agreed.  He would talk to Barristan Selmy.  He was sure Eddard would convince the honorable man to travel east.  Even if meant disgrace for the man. 

Arya would be ready.  She would have to change her views on many things.  The Wharf King chuckled evilly.

Tyrion was the Hand of the King and Queen but the Wharf King knew he too would be sent east.

It was preordained no matter how the entrails or tarot cards were laid out. His Blind Visions would win out.  Like Arya in her skills the Wharf King was absolute in his beliefs in his visions.

He entered a dark alcove and grip by grip went down to the next floor by a knotted rope and walked on for next handful of minutes counting steps and clicking to echo locate his path.

In another part of the Drown Town he entered a room with queer light emanating from it.  He could not see it but he felt the light waves washing over his skin.  He entered the room with the Dragon Glass Candle.  The tall obsidian candle twisted with sharp edges and black as midnight.  The glass candle give off an unpleasantly bright light that did strange things to colors. The whites became as bright as fresh fallen snow, yellow shown like gold, reds turned to flame, and shadows become so black that they looked like holes in the world.

These colors and timbres made men unsettled and twisted their thoughts if left unguarded.  In this, the Wharf King’s blindness shielded him from the deleterious effects of the Dragon Glass Candles.

He reached out to the table and picked up the wire frames that held the hollowed out scales from around the orbital eye socket of a dragon.  The scales hollowed out so only the thinnest sliver remained.  The scales covered in runes and polished to a flat luster.  He picked up the frames and hooked the legs around his ears.  He looked at the dragon glass candle through the Dragon Scales.

Being blind the Wharf King was inured against the streaming light even with the magical glasses he now wore.  The queer light did not unsettle the man.  Nor could the light touch his mind and bend him to its will.  The light sensed he was not of Valyria but was powerless to resist his summons.

With his special crafted glasses on, the Wharf King saw all that his Wharf Rats saw holding their own hollowed out and rune covered scales to their eyes.  With the power of his magic and the power of the Dragon Glass Candle the Wharf King watched all but the Kindly Man depart.  The need for stealth eschewed for now. 

He had his Rats positioned all around the Drowned Town.  His powers great allowing him to see all their visons at once and make sense of the images.  The dragons of the past saw in many bands of light.  So did the Wharf King.  He saw the strange red and yellow images of people in the total darkness.

He had power.  In time he would use it.

//////////

Daenerys came out of the establishment she had been residing in with her deplorable brother.  She looked up at the faded timbers and caulking starting to peal out of the joints of the hotel.  The building was definitely still tenable but clearly had seen better days.  With her new found largesse she wondered if she should move herself into a better hotel.  She decided against it.  Viserys’s dragon had been in a torpor lately and she had no desire to rouse it.

She moved off to take her late afternoon walk.   She liked to enjoy the air that had started to cool with the sun angling towards the Titan.  Viserys had wandered off to go to his dive the Drunken Duck or whatever it was called.  As long as he was out of her hair she was happy.  She tolerated his presence when he felt it necessary to accompany her outside.  She pretended to listen to him pontificate on his supposed greatness.  Once he had been to his little sister.  Not so much anymore.  She knew she truly detested Viserys now.

Still she was only one woman.  A woman alone.  She needed his presence for stability.  She was nowhere ready to be alone in life.  She saw men leering at her when she took her walks.  In the broad daylight she felt safe enough.  She would not be caught out after dark.  Those leers told her what the men thought of her and what they wanted to do to her.  She had a taste of that and it left a most bitter taste in her mouth.

She moved down the paved lane.  She soon came to the bridge and prepared to cross over it.  Which direction to take after she crossed.  Normally, she took the right and moved into the nicer neighborhoods to enjoy looking at the architecture of the buildings and the bridges she crossed over.  She liked how Braavos had so many flavors to the construction of the edifices erected.  In that direction, the traffic tended to be lighter and the persons walking with her more genteel and less people on the street hawking wares.

The way left led to poorer neighborhoods and a certain more coarseness to the patrons and street vendors one encountered there.  Still those neighborhoods had a vitality that the richer ones did not seem to have.  The richer neighborhoods lacked a certain vitality.

She reached the apex of the Chrysanthemum Bridge.  Daenerys looked at the thin veneer of metal banded to the handrails.  Nickel had been blended in with gold in the right ratio to produce a light yellow to the metal shod over the trusses.  The thin metals strips riveted to the brass underlying backbone of the archway trusses and handrails that the pedestrians walked on and held onto.  The expense showed the ambitions of this neighborhood.  She paused at what she saw.  A smile came over her face.

On the right side of roadway after the bridge a horse drawn cart filled with chicken coops had an axle break.  Of course the long hay and coop filled cart had toppled over.  The coops spilling down to the paved stones.  Many had broken or sprung open. 

Mayhem now ensued.

Daenerys observed a man in his early thirties maybe screaming at two teenage boys chasing chickens here and there.  The chickens squawking harshly with a few roosters having flown up onto some iron wrought seats with one on a gas lamp post.  The roosters crowing loudly their bodies shaking with their vigor.

The boy’s hands kept jerking back when they grasped for the errant hens and larger male birds.  The birds pecking and slashing at the youth with their beaks and claws.  The birds happy with their freedom thank you very much.  The birds did not want to visit the cooking pot anytime soon Daenerys mused.

She turned left and headed into the slightly seedier side of town.  She still felt safe.  There were still plenty of Bravos walking about.  Young men always quick to prove their gallantry and nobility.  Well, sometimes they did.  They seemed to do more preening for each other than a damsel.  Many of the Bravos did seem to walk close together and touch each other a lot. 

She wondered why but it was not important.  She walked on looking about her.

The pale Valyrian always found enjoyment looking at the buildings around her as she walked.  The bridges works of art in their own right.  The Gondolas beneath her in the canals like colorful flowers on the water.  The men on the stern the stigmas of the flowers while their craft were the petals.

The young woman walked along the streets observing the buildings.  It always fascinated Daenerys how the buildings varied in color and the size and arrangement of their windows.  The buildings seeming arranged with large sized play blocks like she had played with while a child.  The placement of these large blocks haphazard.  There was no pattern she could discern to the buildings as to their footprint or how many stories.

She currently was walking down the street and it seemed as if the blocks had been turned on end and sort squeezed together.  Most of the buildings were three stories tall with some having high angled roofs that had quarters for lodging in the lofts.  But several squat one story buildings were thrown in the mix as well.  All the buildings colorful and often clashing with their neighbors.  The rectangular and arced windows interspersed and pretty to look at.

It was then Daenerys noticed a street vendor she had not noticed before.  She had seen that the vendors seemed to be of two minds.  Some staked out a spot and defended it like a bear protecting her cubs. The other mindset seemed to have a desire to move constantly seeking ever new green fields to ply.  This woman must be of the later persuasion.  Daenerys had not seen her before.

The woman had a large cart with two large wheels that rose up above the enclosed cart.  She had a medium sized table beside the cart.  The tabletop sitting on high legs.  The table covered with wide brim glasses filled with different colored concoctions.  Many of them had small umbrellas jutting out the fruit and slushy ice some of the drinks had.

The woman sold two drinks to Iron Bank officials judging by their attire.  They seemed most pleased by their fair.  Daenerys decided to sample the wares of the vendor.  She moved toward the vendor still some twenty yards down the lane from the princess.  Her cart to the side near the foot of a canal bridge.

As the Valyrian approached she saw the woman was a lot taller than here five foot tall body.  The woman had dirty blond hair with lots of waves and loose curls that ran down to the middle of her back.  The woman had brown eyes Daenerys saw as she closed on the cart.  She was full bosomed and had an hourglass shape to her hips and waist.  The woman wore an elegant dress that was closed on her throat with a fabric choker.  Her arms covered to her wrist and the hem of her dress to the cobble stone street.

The woman saw Daenerys coming and smiled at the teen.

Daenerys liked the look for some reason.  The woman looked at her with an intensity that made the fourteen year old’s body tingle.  That was until the woman spoke.

“I think you better move on dear … I think you are a little young to be sampling these wares”

“I am fourteen years old I will have you know” Daenerys told the woman.  She knew she looked younger than her age.

“Yeah, _rriiigghhttttt_ ” the woman shook her head “move along sweetie.”

The Valyrian felt her ire rise a notch.

“I’m fourteen I say” she glared at the woman calculating “… I have gold.”

Daenerys rolled her eyes.  That had caught the woman’s attention.

“Well, why didn’t you say so?!  What can I get you my nubile underage girl?”

“I am not too young!” Daenerys barked at the woman before controlling herself.  This woman was snooty and though she dressed well was obviously lacking in breeding.

“I want that pretty drink with all the colors in it” Daenerys pointed to the glass with that drink.

“That has a kick … maybe you should dry th—“

Daenerys cut in “I will buy that drink ma’am.”  She fished out the cold dragon coin.

The vendor whistled seeing it.

“Ho ho!  Someone is indeed rich … I didn’t know.”  The woman smiled down at Daenerys.  The woman now hurried to fix a ‘pretty drink’ for her.

Daenerys sneered at the woman changing her demeanor on the turn of a slender coin.  It was amazing what gold could do for a person’s attitude.  A person with a sadly lacking personality.

Still the woman had a quality to her.  She was snooty but something called to Daenerys for some reason.

The woman handed her the finished drink.  Daenerys took a sip.  It was quite good.  The pleasure showing on her face.

“I have not seen you here before.  Your accent … Pentos?”  Daenerys was curious about this woman.

“Very good my astute Valyrian.”

Daenerys rolled her eyes slightly.

“What brings you to our fair city?” Daenerys asked the drink vendor.

“Well … ah—ahem … I had certain entanglements with a particular constable  … _soooooo_ … I had to take vacation for a while.”

“I bet” Daenerys snarked back under her breath.

“Your accent is slightly off too I might say … uh—what is your name?”

“Daenerys Targaryen” spoken with pride.  “I come from a High House.”

“Okay, Denesewry Stargaryen … I don’t care if you live in a four story house … you from Lys?  Maybe an escaped lady of ill repute?”

The fourteen year old’s eyes flared open in suppressed rage. 

“How dare you” the teenager snarled in a suppressed breath.  “It is Daenerys Targaryen.  I am a royal scion.  My family sat on the Iron Throne.”  Daenerys could not help the slightly snooty tone of her answer.  She was a High Princess afterall.

“That must be some fancy toilet if you give it a name.”

“You bitch” Daenerys whispered.  This woman was infernal.

“I am royalty.”  Daenerys stopped when the woman raised an eyebrow.  “Okay! My brother will be king but I am a crown princess.”

The two glared at each other.

“You mean a bauble to be sold off.  I have heard how this Royalty works in Westeros. ”

Daenerys face fell.

The woman’s hand suddenly shot out and gripped Daenerys shoulder and squeezed softly.

“I’m sorry.  I can’t control my mouth most of the time.  I am sorry if I hurt you.  But I have thought.”  The woman made direct eye contact with Daenerys.  The hand gripping her shoulder squeezed her gently soothing the Princess.  The vendor’s eyes now intense as they locked with Daenerys.

Daenerys arched her eyebrow asking for elaboration.

“Men are weak and stupid.  They have two heads and they don’t think with the right one most of the time.  They are insipid and venial.  When the time comes and come it will, strike Daenerys Targaryen.  Take what is yours and never release it.”

Daenerys almost believed the woman.  The way the drink vendor said it made her words into prophecy.  She wished it could be so.  The words did give Daenerys a feeling of strength though.  The woman’s sudden empathy was touching.  Daenerys felt that certain something again in this woman’s presence.

“Do I know you?” she searched the woman’s eyes.

The woman searched her face in return.  “No.  No I don’t think so.”

“I feel we have met.”

“Where are you from if I may ask?”

“Westeros.  My family sat on the Iron Throne” she glared at the woman daring her to say anything.  The woman deliberately looked innocent.  Daenerys sensed the woman was suppressing a smart ass comment.  She almost hoped the woman would snark.

“Why are you here then?”

“The Lions, Stags and Direwolves betrayed our family.”

“You mean a menagerie?  Did the animals escape and savage your family?  Were you cruel to them?” the woman asked with seeming innocence. 

Daenerys gritted her teeth.  There was no way this woman was this obtuse.  Daenerys sensed this woman was much more intelligent that she was letting on.  Still.  The woman acted like an ass!  She was insufferable.  She told the woman bluntly “No!  In Westeros High Houses have a symbol, an animal usually, but some are different like Dorne has a spear and Highgarden …”

The woman was looking at her with a bored expression.  Clearly the history of Westeros did not mean anything to the woman.  She was now checking her glasses and product to make more drinks. 

This angered Daenerys.  To have her past ignored made her feel ignored.

She felt her ire rise.  “My father, brother and his family were executed in cold blood.”

The woman’s body jerked and she looked back at her customer.  The woman’s face went somber. 

“I am so sorry to hear that.  That must be hard.  I don’t know what to say.”  The woman looked around a little confusedly.  “I have never been to Westeros and only came her a week ago.  I highly doubt we have ever met Daenerys Targaryen.  I am sorry about your family’s past Princess.”  She looked at Daenerys with a face of sadness filling it.

So the woman did understand the pronunciation of my name.  _Bitch_.  Her anger ameliorated though with the woman’s seeming genuine sympathy.  She felt the woman’s seeming now true emotion.  There was something about this strange street vendor.  Daenerys felt a familiarity towards the woman.  She noticed the woman’s discomfiture and wanting to avoid talking of her family’s betrayal and sad fate.  Daenerys dropped the past and focused on the present.

“Are you sure we have not met?  There is something familiar about you.”

“No I fear not.  Unless we met in Pentos, then we have not met.”

“Strange.”  Daenerys took her glass with her multi colored drink and sipped it turning away.

The woman called to her.  She turned back.

She had out a hammer and her chisel.  “I need to give you the gold dragon back after I knock off the sliver to pay for the drink.”

Daenerys smiled at the woman benignly.  She could afford to be generous to the snooty woman.

“Keep it.  Remember me.”  Daenerys walked away.  The woman had been a bitch but there had been something about her.  First she was confounding and then sympathetic.  A confusing dichotomy of reactions.  The woman raised a cacophony of feelings within the Princess’s heart.  Daenerys walked on reflecting on the just finished conversation.  What was it about the woman that fascinated her?  She just had an air about her Daenerys finally concluded.  She resumed perusing her surroundings as she walked.

//////////

Arya Stark watched Daenerys walk away without a backward look.  Like she had in the Temple of Black and white.  Arya was both relieved and perplexed.  She had setup the broken chicken cart to shuttle the Princess this direction.  She needed to plumb the temperament of this woman whom she was to lift up to become Queen of Westeros.

All the words and prophecies she had heard over the last few days had started to bother Arya.  Syrio hinted and Jaqen was sure that Daenerys would be become a despot.  That she had a cruelty in her breast merely waiting to manifest itself.

She had insulted and prodded the fallen princess.  She had a temper for sure.  Still, that was all she had seen.  She did not have any of the traits her brother manifested with every breath he took.  Faceless men and their spying brethren were taught how to read persons.  It was always tricky but by observing and listening one could get at least a feel for a person and their true selves.

Daenerys was good.  If Arya could keep the future Queen from suffering interminable heartache and betrayal then all should be good.  She would watch Daenerys as she shepherded the woman to her destiny.  Her memory told her that Daenerys father did not show his insanity at first.  She would have to research that.

The white haired woman was slowly disappearing into the crowd.  She was pleasing to her eye even if she was kind of scrawny.  While the fallen Princess seemed free of cruelty she would be headstrong when she came into her own Arya surmised.  That would be fun to deal with.  Not!

Arya watched the Valyrian till she could not see her anymore.  Two customers came up for drinks and she focused on them.  While in her character she would play the part to perfection.

While she prepared the drinks she ruminated on how the fourteen year old had somehow unconsciously known that she had met Arya.  It was impossible.  While not wearing a ‘face’ she had used her face and neck muscles to totally change the geometry of her face.  It had been dark in the temple and Daenerys had been rattled when they spoke in the temple of Black and White.

Arya had on boots with three inch lifts and had a hidden two inch bench behind her cart to give her more height.  She had on a wig and brown colored contact lens in her eyes.  Her accent from Pentos impeccable.  Her dress had falsies and padding on her hips to give her the traditional hourglass shape to her body.

Still, Daenerys had sensed some familiarity with Arya.  Strange.  She would have to be on the top of her game in the future when around Daenerys.

A smile came on her face accepting her fare and tip from her two patrons. 

Daenerys would prove to be a good Queen.  Arya would ensure it.  Tomorrow, Arya, Faceless Man of the Temple of Black an White, would begin to shape destiny.


End file.
